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OUR DEBT TO THE RED MAN 




REV. JUSKi'lL A1A.UT1N, WTKK AND CHILD 
Freueh-Chippewa 

Odonah. Wis. 



Our Debt to the 
Red Man 

THE FRENCH-INDIANS 

IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE 

UNITED STATES 

BY 

Louise Seymour Houghton 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

The Hon. Francis E. Leupp 

FORMERLY INDIAN COMMISSIONER 

Illustrated 




1918- 
The STRATFORD COMPANY, Publishers 

BOSTON 



Copyright 1918 

The STRATFORD CO., Publishers 

Boston, Mass. 



m 27 1918 



The Alpine Press, Boston, Mass., U. S. A. 



0CI,A499159 



Augustus Seymour Houghton 

AND 

Henry Houghton 

The joy of my declining years, 

and whose interest in my 

work has made it 

doubly delightful. 



Foreword 

THE mixed-blood Indian is so widely regarded 
with disfavor, owing to the superficial criticism 
heaped upon him in certain quarters, that Mrs. Hough- 
ton's book will make a strong appeal to all fair- 
minded students of our aboriginal race problem. The 
too prevalent impression is doubtless based on the 
fact that, of late years, the natural resources of some 
Indian reservations have attracted speculative white 
adventurers, not a few of whom, taking Indian 
women to wife, have sadly neglected the children 
born of their union. But, as those of us know who 
are familiar at first hand with frontier conditions, 
any such sweeping judgment is unjust ; for on every 
side we meet squawmen Avho, though uneducated in 
the ordinary sense, have proved their possession of 
character and force, and have devoted their best facul- 
ties to the improvement of their families and the ad- 
vancement of the tribes with which they are affiliated. 
In the volume before us, Mrs. Houghton has largely 
confined her observations to the Indians who trace 
their white blood to French sources. Her great store 
of data is the fruit of a painstaking search of several 
years through records ancient and modern, official 
and scientific, religious and literary. I am glad to 
note that, after showing how much we owe the mixed- 
bloods for their contributions toward the upbuilding 

Y 



Foreword 

of our country, she advises our responding: appreci- 
atively with three measures in particular : the prompt 
emancipation of all competent red wards from Gov- 
ernment bondage ; the systematic revision of our 
ragged mass of laws touching Indian affairs, and their 
reduction to a self-consistent code; and the provision 
for the opening of a court for the claims of Indians 
against the United States — a step which might be 
trusted to relieve honest claims of the suspicious savor 
many of them have absorbed from contact with scan- 
dal-tainted neighbors. 

Francis E. Leupp. 

Washington, D. C, March 25, 1918. 



VI 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

THIS book could not have been written but for 
the kindly help of scores of men and women to 
whom I was unknown, who have answered my letters, 
directed me to sources of information and assisted 
me to discover facts of importance and interest in 
this field. Especially are my thanks due to various 
members of the Society of American Indians, notably 
to its President, Mr. Arthur C. Parker, State Arche- 
ologist and member of the New York State Board of 
Education, to the former chairman of its Executive 
Committee, Prof. J. N. B. Hewitt of the Smithsonian 
Institution, its Treasurer, Mrs. Marie Louise Bot- 
tineau Baldwin, and its Secretary, Mrs. Raymond T. 
Bonnin. To Miss Caroline M. Mcllvaine of the Chi- 
cago Historical Society I am under many obligations, 
and only in a less degree to Mr. Jacob P. Dunn, 
Mrs. R. M. Dunlap, Mr. Edgar R. Harlan and Mr. 
Doane Robinson, respectively of the Indiana, Min- 
nesota, Iowa and South Dakota Historical Societies, as 
to Dr. F. G. Speck of the University of Pennsylvania, 
to Mr. Alanson Skinner of the Museum of Natural 
History, to Mr. 0. H. Lipps of Carlisle Indian School 
and several teachers in that institution, to Mrs. Mc- 
Coy, Mr. Dagenett and other persons in the employ of 
the United States Indian Bureau, to Father Gordon 
of the Roman Catholic Indian Bureau, to Gen. R. H. 
Pratt and to the Hon. Gabe Parker. To the Hon. 
Warren K, Moorehead, formerly Indian Commis- 

yii 



Acknowledgments 

sioner and to Mr. Arthur C. Parker, who read the 
book in manuscript and gave me valuable suggestions, 
as also to the Hon. Francis E. Leupp, formerly In- 
dian Commissioner, who has written the Introduc- 
tion to this book, I am particularly indebted. 

Louise Seymour Houghton. 

Philadelphia, March, 1918. 



VUl 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 
V 



Foreword ...... 

List of Illustrations . . . . xi 

I. Introducing the Subject ... 1 
II. The Original American ... 22 
III. Indians of Mixed Blood — A General 

View 46 

VI. French Mixed-Bloods of the Middle 

West 51 

V. Metis of Noble Blood on Both Sides . 60 
VI. French-Indians as Mediators . . 71 

VII. Metis Loyalty 79 

VIII. The Gift of Tongues .... 94 

IX. The Metis as a Trader . . .102 
X. French Indians and Exploration . 121 
XI. French Indians in the Settlement of 

the West . . ... .132 

XII. French Indians as Farmers . . 146 

XIII. The Metis as an Industrial Worker . 153 

XIV. The Metis Intellect . . . .158 
XV. The French Indian in the Learned 

Professions ..... 166 
XVI. In Literature and Art . . . 176 
XVII. The Present Situation . . .187 
XVIII. French Mixed-Bloods and Our Indian 

Problem 196 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Rev. Joseph Martin, Wife and Child 


Frontispiece 


Opposite Page 


Chicago in 1831 16 


Sa Batiste Perrote 




. 27 


John N. B. Hewitt . 






37 


Arthur C. Parker 






70 


Pierre Garreaii .... 






99 


Caroline Beaubien 






106 


''Young Joe" Rolette 






119 


Jean Baptiste Bottineau . , 






128 


Charles E. Dagenett . 






155 


Gabe E. Parker .... 






163 


Rosa Bourassa La Plesche . 






165 


Emily P. Robitaille .... 






169 


Marie Louise Bottineau Baldwin 






173 


Angel De Cora Dietz 






185 


Gertrude Bonnin .... 






206 



XI 



Introducing the Subject 

OF the various races that have contributed to the 
development of the United States there is one 
whose part is as yet wholly unrecognized. 
Through intermarriage with a certain white race the 
original American, the Indian, has done more for us 
than we realize, or at this distance of time shall per- 
haps ever be able wholly to ascertain. We remember — 
or do we not rather forget ? — that when the white men 
came in their winged canoe across "the Sea of big 
Stormes" to the bleak shore of the "Dawn Land," 
Chief Samoset met them with outstretched hand and 
the "Welcome, Englishmen," which he had learned 
from the fisher folk with whom he had traded on the 
Newfoundland banks. We quite forget that during that 
first cruel winter of 1620-21 it was the food and the 
furs brought them by the Indians that saved our fore- 
fathers from bitter death by cold and hunger; that 
Squanto came in the spring and taught them how to 
grow the unfamiliar corn, and that Samoset was their 
protector as well as their interpreter as they threaded 
the Indian-haunted forests. We forget that even ear- 
lier than this our Virginia ancestors had for several 
years been saved from starvation by the maize, pump- 
kins and succotash, and comforted by the tobacco, with 
which the Powhatans generously provided them. We 

[1] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

forget the early friendship between Roger Williams 
and the Narragansetts, a charming though too brief 
episode amid the grim realities of the early years. We 
only remember that — through the misapprehensions of 
the unschooled Red Men, shall we say ? — or through 
the blunders of the civilized whites ? — enmity arose be- 
tween them, with hatred so bitter that so early as 1637, 
after the frightful massacre of Mystic River, Increase 
Mather could stand up in his pulpit and thank the 
Lord 'Hhat on this day we have sent six hundred 
heathen souls to hell." The events that followed may 
well have lent to the next generation of Puritan set- 
tlers some reason for sharing the opinion of Robert 
Sanford, writing home from the Carolina shore ("Re- 
lation") of "natives whose Piety it is to be barbarous, 
and whose Gallantry to be inhuman ; ' ' but in the be- 
ginning it was not so. 

Though after the event at Mystic River, Winthrop 
records (quoted by Wilson, Prehistoric Man, 2: 253) 
"we sent the male children to Bermuda [the adult 
males having been 'sent to hell'j and the women and 
maid children were dispersed about in the towns," 
through whom some strain of Indian blood must have 
come into our New England ancestry ; though the first 
families of Virginia and Maryland are still proud to 
trace in their lineage some kinship to Pocahontas, the 
fact remains that notwithstanding the probability that 
the "vanishing race" has "vanished" not more 
through death than through marriage with the white 
folk, the contempt born of fear which came to be the 

[2] 



Introducing the Subject 

invariable attitude of Anglo-Saxon settlers toward the 
aborigines effectually prevented any mutual influence 
for good between those races in the early time. 

The Dutch also, as well as the people of Connect- 
icut, were notoriously unkind to the Indians. Madame 
Knight, in her famous journey through the region in 
1704, not unnaturally, therefore, found them "the 
most salvage of all the salvages of the kind I have ever 
seen." The contempt thus engendered has lingered 
among their descendants to this day, to our lasting 
disgrace in our treatment of those who have come to be 
the "wards of the nation."^ Therefore it is not among 
Anglo-Saxon "half-breeds" of any period that we may 
seek for any notable service of the Indians in the 
development of the United States. 

Far otherwise, however, were the relations of 
French settlers with the red people. The difference in- 
hered in the initial motives for the settlement of the 
New World. Mr. John C. Covert, former American 
Consul at Lyons, in Les Frangais au Nouveau Monde, 
written about 1890 to encourage French emigration to 
the United States, reminds his readers that the pur- 

1 "Wards of an irresponsible guardian," says ex-Commissioner Fran- 
cis E. Leupp. "A composite guardianship," he adds, pointing 
out the vicious circle in which this trust is worked. The Presi- 
dent must have permission of Congress for any measure, and both 
are helpless before an adverse mandate of the Courts, which 
themselves are the creatures of the President and Congress. He 
instances the Pembina Chippewas, of whom we shall later hear 
more: "As their guardian it (the Government) disciplined them 
when they disregarded its admonitions, as their guardian it took 
possession of large slices of their estate whenever it could claim 
that they were using their land unwisely and therefore would be 
better without it ; as their guardian it concluded that they were 
likely to grow faster in grace if their wild-game supply were cut 
off. and on this pretext compelled them to give up hunting and 
submit to be fed and clothed like paupers at public expense — ". 

[3] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

pose of early French emigration was the conversion of 
the natives, rather than commerce. For that matter, 
the first Royal Charter granted to the Colony of Mass- 
achusetts affirms that ' ' to wynn and incite the natives 
of the Country to the Knowledge and Obedience of the 
onlie true God and Saviour of Mankind is our Royall 
Intencion ; ' ' and the first Seal of Massachusetts Colony 
showed the figure of an Indian with the legend ' ' Come 
over and help us;" but the slender interest lent to 
Eliot's devoted service shows how small a place the 
conversion of the natives held in the "Intencion" of 
Puritan or Pilgrim/ 

Prof. C. W. Colby of McGill University reminds 
us ("Canadian Types of the Old Regime," pp. 82, 3) 
that while ' ' to glorify God by the conversion of native 
races became a prime object with pious sovereigns and 
with the Latin Church in general," the comparative 
apathy of Protestant peoples is not to be attributed 
"altogether to a lower degree of spiritual force than 
existed in the Catholic Church ' ' but chiefly to the dif- 
ference between the sacramental scheme of salvation 
(in which to baptize a dying child or man was to save 
a soul from perdition), and the predestinarian theol- 
ogy of Calvinism, which offered a less strong incentive 
to missionary activity. It cannot be denied, however, 
that with the English government the motive of com- 
mercial profit loomed larger than that of love for 

-Dr. James Douglas ("New England and New France", pp. 451^ 
452) says that no attempt was made by England to Christianize 
the Indians. Eliot's work Avas an individual enterprise in which 
the colonists had little or no part. Cotton Mather does not 



even mention it. 



4] 



Introducing the Subject 

souls. "The great object of colonization upon the 
continent of North America," said the Lords Com- 
missions for Trade and Plantations in 1772 (quoted 
by Turner, ''Fur Trade" p. 75) "is to improve and 
extend the commerce and manufactures of this king- 
dom; therefore," they continue, "the Indians should 
not be disturbed in their hunting grounds" and "all 
colonization should be discouraged." That the fur 
trade was not profitable enough to warrant continuing 
the war was Lord Shelborne's defence for ceding the 
Northwest to the American colonies in 1783. 

This contrast between the English and tne French 
view of relations with the aborigines is aptly shown 
by Mr, Vincent Hazard in his report to the Smithson- 
ian Institution in 1879. The English, he says, re- 
garded the Indians simply as an obstacle to progress, 
a natural foe against whom they waged a war of exter- 
mination, while the French ' ' from the first recognized 
in the red man a fellow being entitled to considera- 
tion." Very naturally, therefore, the colonization of 
New France being effected not by families but mainly 
by single men of enterprise and daring, the French 
youth of the colony early sought wives among the 
daughters of their Indian friends, and French priests 
gladly blessed their union with rites which deeply im- 
pressed the native folk, by nature and long inheritance 
devoted to ritual. From these unions sprang a people 
who played an important though usually a humble 
part in the colonization and civilization of the West, a 
people who far from "uniting the worst qualities of 

[5] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

both races, ' ' as the author of a popular historic study 
has permitted himself to assert/ does in fact, as I hope 
to show, unite many of the best qualities of both. 

The limits of this study will not permit more than 
an allusion to the established fact of the importance 
of mixed races in the history of civilization. Wilson 
in the work already quoted observes that ''the half- 
breed has played a most important part in the advance 
of mankind to the stage of progress that it has reached 
today," a fact also incidentally shown by Mr. James 
Mooney of the Bureau of Ethnology, who writes (in 
the Handbook of American Indians, 1, 914) that 
"much of the advance in civilization made by the 
Cherokees has been due to the intermarriage among 
them of white men, chiefly (French) traders of the 
ante-Revolutionary^ period." Professor Franz Boas 
of Columbia University strongly holds this theory of 
the value of mixed races. It is well stated by M. Jop- 
pincourt in L'Expansion Colo7iiale: "Half-breeds all 
over the world," he says, "have played a most impor- 
tant part in the advance of mankind, ' ' showing by way 
of illustration that it was ' ' by allying themselves with 
the willing daughters of the Abenaki that the sons of 
France created that vigorous Acadian stock whose 
spirit more than once kept at bay the proud invaders 
of Old and New England." A case in point may be 
found in the descendants of Baron Jean Vincent de St. 
Castin, who held a Seigneurie on the Penobscot, and 

» S. A. Drake, "The making of the Ohio Valley States", p. 262; 
Scribner, 1894. 

[6] 



Introducing the Subject 

married the daughter of the high-souled Abenaki chief 
Madockawando (the heroine of Longfellow's Atlantic 
Monthly poem, Vol. 29, p. 334). St. Castin was 
adopted by the tribe and made their chief; he had 
many children and educated them all. Parkman calls 
him a terror and a menace to the English colonists, but 
all the evidence goes to prove that he rendered them 
more than one service before Governor Dongan 
claimed jurisdiction over the region including his 
Seigneury. He had no part in the outbreak of the war, 
though after it was declared he naturally took the 
French side. It is clear, however, that during its pro- 
gress he had no share in any of those acts of barbarity 
which make its memory a horror. 

We may safely assume that similar intermar- 
riages, quite as much as military alliances, had a part 
in the maintenance of French dominion in Canada and 
the West, notwithstanding the immense numerical 
superiority of the English colonies, during the secular 
struggle between England and France.* ''What a 
pity that the French were defeated! "lamented the 
Indians after the capture of Quebec; "their young 
men used to marry our daughters. ' ' 

While these words w^ere being written, several 
years ago, a current issue of New York Times was in- 

* The overwhelming numerical superiority of English over French 
settlers of North America is a matter of common knowledge. In 
1688 there were about 1100 French on the continent and nearly 
twenty times as many English. The population of Canada in 
1721 was 18,000, that of the English colonies more than 400,000. 
Furthermore, at the time of the conquest of Canada, the English 
colonies were still compactly settled between the Atlantic and 
the Alleghenies, while the French were distributed from the 
mouth of the St. Lawrence to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. 

[7] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

forming its readers that American Medecine had taken 
issue with Professor Boas, and incidentally with other 
ethnologists, in the matter of the importance of mixed- 
bloods, basing its contention on the physical weakness 
of the mulatto. The illustration was ''well found," 
since it was the only one that could be found. Mr. 
George Bird Grinnell ("The Indians of Today," p. 
165) had already pointed to the fact that, in striking 
contrast with the offspring of negroes and whites,^ 
Indian mixed-bloods are a stout and hardy race, proli- 
fic and apparently not especially subject to consump- 
tion or other diseases. With the more recent findings 
of the census of 1910, he believes the increase of our 
Indian population since 1890 to be largely among 
mixed-bloods (p. 196). How far the physical weak- 
ness of mulattoes is due to special conditions American 
Medecine does not ask; nor has it apparently sought 
for a basis for its sweeping assertion that ' ' half-breeds 
are a nuisance to themselves and to each parent 
stock ; ' ' but before recommending ' ' a little more biol- 
ogy" to Professor Boas and other distinguished eth- 
nologists, it might be well for American Medecine to 
acquire a little more history. 

The French, says Mr. Arthur Oilman ("History 
of the American People " ) , adopted different means 
and left more lasting memories of success than the 
English or the Spaniards. They fraternized with the 

• Dr. F. G. Speck of the University of Pennsylvania finds that the 
admixture of Negro and Indian blood among the Creeks of Okla- 
homa has produced some splendid specimens of virility, and it 
is within the writer's knowledge that two generations ago (1869- 
1875) Florida could show the same. 

[8] 



Introducing the Subject 

natives in a manner not thought of by any other na- 
tionality-, so that their names remain not only in Can- 
ada and Nova Scotia but in the western Lake region 
and in the Valley of the Mississippi. Mr. Gilman in- 
stances Jean Nieolet, the first white man to see Michi- 
gan and Wisconsin, whom Champlain sent to live with 
the Algonquin tribes to learn their languages, and who 
married an Indian woman and lived like the Indians. 
The late Reuben Gold Thwaites ("Colonies" p. 48) 
draws a contrast between the French and the earlier 
Spanish colonists: "Unlike the Spaniards they rather 
improved the savage stock [by intermarriage] than 
were degraded by it." 

Mr. Elliot Coues, in his recent Introduction to 
Chittenden's "American Fur Trade," observes that 
"the extensive intermarriage of the two races [French 
and Indian] during more than a century, under the 
regime of the fur trade, has done more than any other 
one thing toward the ultimate civilization of an al- 
most untamable race." Such tribes as the Peorias, 
Miamis, Choctaws, Cherokees and others which early 
intermarried with the French, are today among the 
most intelligent Indian tribes, and have made the best 
progress toward civilization. 

History has until recently paid scant attention to 
the doings of common folk, yet between the lines of 
the earliest narratives of those high born adventurers 
of France who, while Jamestown was struggling for 
existence and Plymouth Rock had not yet been heard 
of, had penetrated by Avay of the St. Lawrence and the 

[9] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

Ottawa well into the west, we may discern as sharing 
their adventures a considerable proportion of humbler 
folk, the "poor whites" of France. It must have 
been so. From the fur-bearing animals of the new 
world, France, the clothier of Europe, gained more 
wealth than Spain from all the gold of the south 
country, and to the fur traffic working folk were 
essential. As time went on they came by the ship load 
to serve as hunters, as trappers, as burden bearers. 

Not all of these, indeed, were of the lower classes. 
Men with good blood in their veins, but full of the 
spirit of adventure, cast in their lot with these 
humbler folk, chiefly preceding them in fact as cou- 
reurs and voyageurs. To these the United States owes 
an immense debt. They were the pioneers of commerce 
on Lake Superior and on other northern waters; in 
their bark canoes they crossed and recrossed the con- 
tinent long before other white men had crossed the 
Alleghenies. They were the first roadmakers, broad- 
ening for their burden bearers the Indian trails that 
followed the buffalo tracks, showing the way for the 
military road, the plank road and the railroad. 
''Broadly speaking," says Mrs. John M. Kinzie, the 
author of "Waubun," "the continent has been opened 
by these men. "** 

With them or closely following them came priests. 



In 1914 New York and Massachusetts celebrated with interesting 
ceremonies the recognition of the Mohawk Trail between those 
states. Like most other Indian trails this one was in existence 
long before white men saw this region, but it was quite as much 
through French as English traders that even this trail became a 
highway of the white people. 

[10] 



Introducing the Subject 

who for the weal of all concerned encouraged their 
marriage with Indian girls and baptized their children 
— children who bore a notable part in the development 
of our Northwest, to the very shores of the Pacific. 
Many of these alliances were necessarily without other 
than Indian ceremony, for as the years went on, cou- 
reiirs and voyageurs, ' ' that wonderful race of men, ' ' as 
Parkman calls them, went farther afield than the good 
Fathers, with all their devoted enterprise, could fol- 
low; but relatively few of these bonds were broken. 
However universal the reputation of the French for 
marital infidelity, that reputation is not borne out by 
the relations of the French with Indian women from 
that day to this/ 

Not that these men were models of all the virtues. 
The Jesuits in their "Relations" and La Hontan in 
his "Voyages^' give them a pretty bad name. The 
priests were afraid of their brandy and of the in- 
fluence of their recklessness upon their Indian con- 
verts. Intendants who, like Duchesneau, desired to es- 
tablish the colony of New France upon a stable basis 
deprecated the influence of "the call of the wild," 
though Duchesneau doubtless exaggerates when he 
says (1680) that "forty per cent of adult males are 
running wild in the woods. ' ' The worst of them were 
no doubt profane and disreputable, but even the Jes- 

"^ The Rev. John P. "Williamson, a missionary to Indians who are 
nearly all mixed-bloods, himself the son of a missionary and 
born in a tepee, who has passed a ' long life among Indians, 
writes me that even in the present generation Frenchmen mar- 
ried to Indian girls, by Indian ritual merely, are usually more 
faithful than Americans whose connection with Indian women 
has been blessed by a religious ceremony. 

[11] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

uits and La Hontan never dream of accusing them of 
such sins as were committed by the Spaniards in 
Central and South America or the Dutch in the far 
Orient. The lower stratum of this class may have 
been, as Parkman says, "half savage," but they were 
not brutal. Men who could endure the hardships of 
the life must have been, as Professor Colby says, (op. 
cit.) physically picked men. And when we consider 
the stifling restrictions with which the French colony 
was controlled in the 17th and early 18th centuries, we 
can realize that the chief incentive of their escape to 
the woods was certainly not the low motive of profit. 
In an exaggerated form, as Prof. Colby says, the cou- 
reur represents the energy, the dash, the boldness which 
all the early settlers of New I^Vance to some extent dis- 
played; and we may add that he gives evidence of 
singular fidelity in other relations as well as in those 
with women. It was the later voyageurs, the majority 
of them with Indian blood in their veins, whom Gov. 
Stevens in the early 19th century describes as "a 
hardy, willing, enduring class," who need to be 
treated kindly, and are ''the most obedient, hard 
working fellows in the world ; ' ' but the race had not 
greatly changed since the beginning. 

Not coureurs and voyageurs alone, but soldiers 
also were encouraged to marry Indian women, and 
more than one instance is found of men of rank taking 
Indian wives. Though the legend that the celebrated 
interpreter Madame Montour was the daughter of 
Count Frontenac is without foundation, yet such offi- 

[12] 



Introducing the Subject 

cers in the French army as Sabrevoir de Carrie, 
father of a long line of hereditary chiefs, the military 
Commandant Jean Baptiste Cadotte, ancestor of men 
of note in Indian diplomacy and in literature, the 
Baron de St. Castin, already* mentioned, married 
the daughters of Indian chiefs. 

Such Canadian writers as Mr. Benjamin Suite 
and the Abbe Tanguay are indeed stout in the con- 
tention that very few of the scions of French nobil- 
ity who made illustrious the early history of New 
France married Indian women, and with some notable 
exceptions they are doubtless right. But though for 
many reasons a large number of young men of noble 
birth were attracted to the New World, we have al- 
ready seen that they were few in comparison with 
the whole. Mr. John Reade's statement (Trans. Roy. 
Soc. Can. 1885) that hardly any family of the lower 
ranks of original settlers in Canada is without some 
Indian blood is not in essential disagreement with 
Mr. Suite and the Abbe Tanguay. Dr. James Douglas 
(op. cit.) finds comparatively few French mixed- 
bloods in Canada (he is referring to the earliest set- 
tled territory), but some in New York, Ohio, Penn- 
sylvania, Illinois, perhaps even in Maryland, and 
many in the Northwest. In fact, owing to the century- 
long enmity between the Iroquois and the French there 
was an unusually large proportion of captives, many 
of them women, adopted or married into the tribes 
of the Six Nations. Many of their descendants are 
today persons of prominence, proud to trace French- 

[13] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

Indian ancestry; notably such men as Prof. J. N. B. 
Hewitt of the Smithsonian Institution and Mr. Arthur 
C. Parker, State Archeologist and member of the 
Department of Education of New York State. To a 
less extent the same was the case in Northern Penn- 
sylvania, the '^ South Door" of the Iroquois Long 
House. 

To Dr. Douglas's statement Dr. Charles Eastman 
adds that there are "many French mixed-bloods in 
Maine," and Dr. Speck particularizes with the state- 
ment that the blood of St. Castin flows today through 
the veins of seventy-five per cent of the Penobscots, 
''all of whom, practically, have French blood," he 
adds. 

These statements are not necessarily in contra- 
diction to the assertions of the Canadian writers just 
mentioned. The members of the ruling class naturally 
remained in the cities, Quebec, Montreal, and later 
Detroit, Mobile, New Orleans. It was the humbler 
folk who penetrated the forests and married among 
the Indians, and whose mixed-blood children bore a 
part, and as I hope to show a not unimportant part, in 
the early civiliation of the United States. Not a few 
of these Frenchmen of lower degree married the 
daughters of Indian chiefs. ''Antoine Gamelin, mes- 
senger," as he signs himself in a State paper so late 
as 1832, was son-in-law of a Wabash or Miami chief. 
As early as 1693 a member of La Salle's expedition 
married the daughter of the chief of the Kaskaskia 
Indians. We shall later find the commandant of the 

[14] 



Introducing the Subject 

important post of Ste. Marie du Sault, as also the 
French nobleman who became the father of "the 
Father of Wisconsin," and other men of prominence, 
becoming sons-in-law of chiefs of the Sioux, Potawat- 
omie, Winnebago and other tribes, and the ancestors 
of men to whom our country is deeply indebted. 

However it may be in Canada, it is certain there 
is much Indian blood among the descendants of those 
Frenchmen who were the earliest settlers of a large 
part of the Middle States and of some parts of the 
Northwest. In the southern and western part of 
Pennsylvania were the Shawnees, who early in the 
18th century had migrated from Carolina and settled 
on the western branches of the Susquehanna. Many 
of these were trading with the French before the 
Proprietory Government had extended its interest so 
far westward. More than one historic French name 
appears among this branch of the Shawnees, among 
them that of Cavalier, the famous Camisard leader. 
Nearly all the earlier cities of our western states, 
from Chicago to the Rocky Mountains, grew up, like 
Vincennes, around a French fur trading post, some- 
times for convenience established, as were Milwaukee 
and Prairie du Chien, in an Indian village, sometimes, 
like Michilimackinac and later, Chicago, at a conve- 
nient site for a military outpost, whither the Indians 
flocked for trade ; and in either case French and In- 
dians mingled in marriage. 

In fact, only in Detroit and Kaskaskia, of all the 
Middle West, was intermarriage of the French and 

[15] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

Indians not general in the early days. The late John 
Gilmary Shea said that few French families of this 
region are without some descent from ''the noble Illi- 
nois tribe." Prof. Alvord of the University of Illi- 
nois thinks, indeed, that marriage between French and 
Indians was not so generally practised in Illinois as is 
commonly believed, yet the Handbook of American 
Indians appears to agree with Shea: "Few families of 
French descent in Illinois and Missouri are free from 
Indian blood. ' ' Mrs. Kinzie states in ' ' Waubun ' ' that 
most of the inhabitants of Chicago in 1831 (the year 
after the place was laid off in town lots) were Cana- 
dians or French mixed bloods with "occasionally a 
stray Yankee." It was in the next year, 1832, that 
Maximilian, Prince of Wied, on his travels through 
the West, found at Council Bluffs Agency, Mo., a num- 
ber of French servants of the American Fur Company 
married to Omaha or Oto (Siouan) women. On the 
Osage Eiver he also found many French-Osage In- 
dians. So recently as 1845 very much the larger pro- 
portion of the white inhabitants of Minnesota were 
Canadian or Swiss French, and most of these inter- 
married with Indians. English was spoken by not 
more than three families in the State. In the Red 
River country in 1848 there were no white women. 
The inhabitants were French Canadians or metis, 405 
of them with Indian wives, whose children were set 
down on the record as white. 

Well into the third decade of the nineteenth cen- 
tury all the traders in Michigan were- French mixed- 

[16] 




■^ 'n ^ 



§1! 

Els 






Introducing the Subject 

bloods or Frenchmen with Indian wives, such honored 
names as Rolette, Beaubien and Grignon being among 
them. ''No doubt the proportion of Indian blood in 
the United States is far larger than has been sup- 
posed," writes a student of the subject in a private 
letter. 

It is painful to read in a text book designed, and 
very widely used, for the advanced instruction of 
youth, (An American History, David Sanders Muzzy, 
Ph. D., Barnard College, Columbia University), so ut- 
ter a misapprehension of the relations between the two 
races in the early days as the following: (pp. 85, 86} 
"These wild Frenchmen often sacrificed their native 
tongue, their religion, even their very civilization it- 
self, and joined the aboriginal American tribes, marry- 
ing Indian squaws, eating boiled dog and mush,^ daub- 
ing their naked bodies with greasy war paint, leading 
the hideous dance and the murderous raid." Mr. 
Muzzy 's estimate of the Peace of Paris is that "for 
Canada it meant the breaking of that unnatural alli- 
ance with savages;" utterly ignoring the true charac- 
ter of that alliance as its features are spread upon 
every page of early chronicle and later story of our 
western states. The only cogent, and the quite suffi- 
cient, protest against this historian 's misreading of the 
data of history lies not in argument, but in the serious 



^ Mr. Muzzy apparently forgets that the crime of eating mush (hasty 
pudding) was universally committed by our New England ances- 
tors, our Dutch forbears, too, and even persists to this very day 
among many who can claim no Indian blood. The soldiers of 
the Revolutionary army were mainly fed upon it, as the Amer- 
ican public was lately (May 1917) reminded. 

[17] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

study of the contribution of French Indians to the 
development of our country and its civilization. 

It must be admitted that such a study is not an 
easy one. The slow method of hand-picked facts, from 
chance allusions in local histories, in the publications 
of Historical societies and in Colonial and American 
State Papers, supplemented by correspondence and in- 
terview, alone avails, since the subject is as yet un- 
worked. The difficulty is enhanced not only by the 
orthographical difficulties with which we shall find the 
priests struggling in efforts to register marriages and 
baptisms, but by others which have been encountered 
by later writers, making it not easy to trace the parent- 
age of mixed-bloods/ 

Moreover, certain names truly French are identi- 
cal with names as certainly English or at least British. 
There is a fair probability that the George Morgan 
who in 1777 was Superintendent of Indian Affairs, as 
well as others of the name Morgan whom we meet in 
the old Illinois Country, were descended from some 
member of the family of the Sieur de Vinsenne after 
whom Vincennes, Indiana, was named, and whose fam- 
ily name was Morgane. Francois Morgan, nephew of 



'Mr. Carrow" of the Lewis and Clark expedition, for instance, 
was probably a mixed-blood by name Pierre Garreau, son jr 
reputed son of a Frenchman or French- Canadian. (Fort Pierre: 
S. Dak. Coll: 1, p. 187.) "He was courteous in his manners 
very intelligent and was highly esteemed by all his associates, 
white and Indian. When I knew him he had no children left, . . . 
three of his sons were killed by the King." (Private letter 
to the librarian of the Chicago Historical Library.) This is one 
of scores of instances. The honorable metis name Boileau has 
three different spellings today; La Framboise has more than 
three. Viall, Vieux, are found for Viaud, etc. 



[18] 



Introducing the Subject 

the Sieur de Vinsenne, was the second Commandant at 
Ouatenon, near the later Vincennes. Yet we cannot 
be sure that this name, often occurring among Indians, 
even to the existence of an Indian village of that 
name on the Mississippi River, is not the result of 
adoption rather than of blood inheritance/ 

Admiration, a grace of which the Indian is emin- 
ently capable, has its share in the difficulties of the 
student of this subject. ' ' Logan the Mingo, ' ' the son 
of a Frenchman adopted into the Oneida tribe, effect- 
ively concealed that French blood which, if recog- 
nized, would have made him more than ever abhorred 
and dreaded by the whites of New York and Pennsyl- 
vania, by taking the name of his admired friend James 
Logan, Secretary and for a time Acting Governor of 
Pennsylvania.' (H. A. I., 1 ; 772) . 

The absence of data for differentiating between 
French and other mixed-bloods, and even between full 
and mixed-bloods, greatly complicates this study. The 
first attempt of the American Government to establish 



1 This was the opinion of so well informed a person as Senator 

Clapp (to whom I am much indebted), who, however, had for- 
gotten until I reminded him of it that Morgan was the family 
name of the first (French) governor of Vincennes. 

2 The ethnologist, Mr, J. N. B. Hewitt (H. A. I. 2; 548) quotes 

John Bartram as saying that Chief Shikellamy, Logan's father, 
was a Frenchman "born in Montreal, captured and adopted by 
the Oneidas." "A trusty good man and a great lover of the 
English", says the Governor of Pennsylvania in 1731. The Rev. 
George B. Donehoo, writing in "The Red Man" (Dec. 1914), 
says that Shikellamy made possible the settlement of Pennsyl- 
vania, if not the American Nation ; and though we may take this 
judgment with a grain of salt, it seems certain that the English 
must have blundered fearfully in other acts beside that brutal 
murder of Indians, including a number of relatives of Shikel- 
lamy' s son Logan, by white settlers on the Ohio in 1774, which 
made Logan the inveterate and fearful enemy of the whites 
which he became. 



[19] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

the latter distinction was made in the census of 1910, 
the results of which have been but lately given to the 
public, (published in 1915). In this census, however, 
no effort is made to distinguish between nationalities 
in the parentage of mixed-bloods, and inferences must 
chiefly be based upon what history tells us as to the 
localities in which the French for the most part en- 
tered into relations with the Indians. Even the invalu- 
able Handbook of American Indians (H. A. I., Bulletin 
30 of the publications of the Smithsonian Institution), 
"the Indian's Bible" as students of Indian subjects 
are apt to call it, seldom undertakes to make this dis- 
tinction. The only studies of the subject as yet ap- 
pearing in print are Mr. V. Hazard's already quoted 
"French Half-breeds of the North-west," made for 
the Smithsonian in 1879, and the Rev. A. G. Morice's 
recent Dictionaire des Metis^ neither of which contem- 
plates our immediate subject. This differentiation is 
however not less important as a contribution to our 
past history than for the light it throws upon the 
Indian character. 

If the time for idealizing "the noble red man" 
after the manner of Chateaubriand and early novelists 
of his school is long past, past is also the time for 
contempt and objurgation of the race. Now, though 
late, is the time for a candid attempt to understand 
the Indian people, and if some exercise of the idealiz- 

3 To avoid repetition of an awkward compound I shall henceforth fre- 
quently adopt the Canadian usage, designating French mixed- 
bloods as "metis" a word which, though denoting mixed-bloods of 
whatever races, has in Canada and in our Northwest come to be 
restricted to persons of French-Indian ancestry. 

[20] 



Introducing the Subject 

ing faculty is necessary for such understanding, this 
is no more than is necessary for arriving at any truth. 
There was pathetic cogency in an utterance at the first 
convention of the Society of American Indians, held 
at Columbus, Ohio, in 1911 : ''I do believe our growing 
disbelief in ourselves is due to our having been mis- 
represented so long, and deferring everything to the 
white man's opinion of us." 

"Think of me at my best," said Steerforth. It 
is the earnest longing of every intelligent Indian that 
his race should be thought of at its best. And because 
such Indians recognize that in general their best, at 
least from the white man 's view point, are the French 
mixed-bloods, the present inquiry, pursued during a 
number of years, has in every instance been welcomed 
and facilitated by Indians and mixed-bloods, and also 
by whites who have been closely associated with them 
as scientists, artists, missionaries, teachers, postmasters 
or Indian agents. Such whites are well nigh unanim- 
ous in their judgment that, so far from ''uniting the 
worst characteristics of both," the French mixed- 
bloods who form no unimportant fraction of our In- 
dian population have for the most part inherited the 
best characteristics of their ancestors of both races, 
and are, generally speaking, superior either to full 
bloods or to mixed bloods of other white lineage. 



[21] 



II . 

The Original American 

YET if we are to think of the Indians of the pres- 
ent day at their best, we must first ask what 
were the original inhabitants of this country, 
what were their standards, their ideals, before the 
white man came. ''Warlike, ruthless, without settled 
homes or productive industries," comes the prompt 
reply from the vague knowledge or the satisfied ignor- 
ance with which we have until now been content/ 

Even if this were a correct description of the In- 
dian of that period, which it certainly is not, we must 
remind ourselves that it also describes all human be- 
ings, even whites, at certain stages of their existence. 
These are the accidents, not the essential characteris- 
tics, of any race. Each race is differentiated from any 
other far more by intellectual and moral characteris- 
tics — ideals, aspirations, standards of conduct — 
than by the physical traits of color, height, form of 
head or slant of eye, by which the unthoughtful dis- 



1 Mr. A. C. Parker, writing in the "Quarterly Journal of the Society 
of American Indians" (June 1915), distinctly refutes the allega- 
tion that American Indians were nomads. They were sedentary, 
and cultivated the ground for the greater part of their food, 
though at certain periods of the year they went far afield to hunt 
the animals which were necessary to them for clothing quite as 
much as for food. With regard to productive industry, the fact 
that our Government is now endeavoring at some expense to re- 
vive the well-nigh lost industries of various tribes is a sufficient 
answer, even without the witness of the moccasin, the Navajo 
blanket, much exquisite pottery and basketry, and the pemmican 
without which Arctic and Antarctic exploration would be im- 
possible. 

[22] 



The Original American 

tinguish them. Cruelty, for example, no more charac- 
terized Samoset and Massasoit and Squantum of the 
earliest days of white immigration, than it charac- 
terized the Mohican Samson Occum who went to Eng- 
land with Whitefield, and so interested the people of 
that realm that not only private persons of influence 
but the King himself made contributions to the amount 
of $60,000 which were by Occum appropriated to the 
founding of Dartmouth College for the education of 
Indian youth. The undesirable qualities which we 
constantly ascribe to Indians no more necessarily 
characterize them than at the present day they char- 
acterize the full-blood Sioux 0-hi-ye-sa, whom we bet- 
ter known as Dr. Charles A. Eastman, lately Agency 
surgeon for the Government, and in 1914 Director of 
the permanent Boy Scout Camp on Chesapeake Bay, 
whose writings and whose life have done much to re- 
move the stigma which unjustly rests upon the Indian ; 
or the Apache Dr. Carlos Montezuma, for long years 
Government physician on various Reservations, and 
later Professor in the College of Physicians and Sur- 
geons and in the Post-Graduate Medical School, Chi- 
cago ; or the gifted young Winnebago minister Henry 
Roe Cloud, a graduate of Yale. We are quite ready to 
give these men rank with men of any race, but we are 
not so ready to recognize that such as they are legiti- 
mate interpreters of Indian character, true exponents 
of the forces that our country has wasted by its fail- 
ure to give the Indian a chance to realize his best. 
Such was the Creek orator Opothleyaholo, who 
[23] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

after long effort to save the lands of his people in 
Georgia for their possession, finally withdrew from 
that Nation when it decided, against all his eloquence, 
to espouse the Confederate cause, and with about a 
third of the Creeks joined the Union, leading them as 
they fought their way from Carolina to Kansas^ — a 
migration which for tragedy may rank with "The 
Flight of a Tartar Tribe."" Such were a large num- 
ber of the Nez Perces, a tribe of unmixed blood, who in 
1831 sent over the Rocky Mountains to St. Louis a 
delegation to ask for ''the white man's Book of 
Heaven," and who during the Civil War served as 
volunteers, never asking nor receiving a dollar of pay. 
This tribe eventually earned for itself a bad name by 
breaking out in protest against the outrages of white 
settlers on their lands. Its then Chief, Joseph, after 
a masterly campaign, in which however he was worsted 
by the United States forces, led his people, their old 
men, women and children, toward Canada, in "a re- 
treat worthy to be remembered with that of Xeno- 
phen's Ten Thousand" (H. A. I. 1 : 634), but which is 
none the less memorable for its witness to the compas- 
sionate heart of the Chief, who, almost within sight of 
the promised land, was moved by the sufferings of the 
non-combatants of the party to accept the bitter humil- 



2 Tliey started with women and children for Kansas, three hundred 
miles away, pursued by men of their own race whom they re- 
sisted in many bloody battles. "Freezing, starving and dying, 
they at length reached Kansas. . . . The able bodied men en- 
listed, and the history of these three Indian regiments presents 
as honorable a record as any in the army." (George A. Rey- 
nolds, Agent. "Indian Affairs, 1869", p. 417.) 



[24] 



The Original American 

iation of surrender to the pursuing troops of the 
United States. 

Such were John Otherday and Paul Mazakula- 
mana, Christian Indians of the Sisseton band, who 
after the Spirit Lake massacre in 1857 followed the 
bloody trail of Chief Inkpaduta^ and rescued the two 
surviving prisoners/ Such was the Seminole Chief 
John Chapko, a ^'splendid specimen," writes the agent 
in 1869, "sergeant in an Indian regiment of the 
United States Army during the Civil War," who 
"loves Lincoln," and "is an earnest church member." 
Such was Chief Ouray of the Southern Utes, noted for 
his services in suppressing the outbreak of his tribe, a 
man whom Carl Schurz thought the noblest man, of 
any race, he had ever known. ^ 

It is not fair, it is eminently unfair, to judge 
of the original American by the Reservation In- 
dian of today. "The Reservation Indian is not the 
noble red man of yesterday," writes Mr. Parker 
(Quart. Journ. S. A. I., 1, 1915), "though all the 



3 This fearful massacre is often adduced as an illustration of the re- 
vengeful character of the Indian. It cannot be denied that when 
it comes to avenging injuries he is ruthless, cunning, in many- 
respects barbarous, but as Dr. T. C. Moffett ("The American 
Indian on the New Trail," p. 22) points out, the Indian is never 
the aggressor. There are two sides to the dreadful Spirit Lake 
massacre, whose leader Inkpaduta has been characterized as 
"too vile to be even countenanced by the Sioux"; for as Dr. 
Moffett reminds us (op. cit. p. 24, n.), "if the grievances of the 
Indians which led to this massacre were narrated as the Indians 
felt them it would lighten much of its dark hue." 

* John Otherday not only rescued Mrs. Gardner in 1857 but in 1862 
helped in the rescue of a missionary party of forty-three. 

^ Mr. Edwin Willard Deming, the well known painter of Indians, 
from his wide acquaintance with this people, is of opinion that, 
without detracting from the praise due to Chief Ouray, there 
have been many nobler Indians than he. 



[25] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

elements of nobility have not departed." He points 
out that even in Oklahoma the depressing effect of 
conditions evolved a people upon whom the agencies 
of human development there given took scant effect, 
' ' The miseries ' ' of the Indian 's external life ' ' are the 
result of a bewildered, disappointed and darkened 
mind. ' ' We may add that the doubtful status of the 
Reservation Indian, half pauper, half responsible for 
his acts — not as a free agent, but as a punishable 
creature, — is enough to depress any race to the low- 
est physical as well as moral terms, so that, as Dr. 
Moffett points out, it is a wonder that he is as good 
as he is. 

When one hears an Indian, possessing the educa- 
tion of a white man, urging upon Indian students at 
Carlisle the importance of cultivating the ''hereditary 
virtues" of the Indian, ''honesty, sympathy and the 
religious instinct ; ' ' when one reads from a cultivated 
Indian pen the matured conviction that "the great 
ideals of the old life must conquer the intrusive race ' ' 
(us white folk), one realizes that it is time to study 
those virtues, those ideals ; and this knowledge to some 
degree gained, one sighs that the effort has been rather 
to root out than to understand the instinctive convic- 
tions and aspirations of the Indian. 

The Rev. Henry Roe Cloud finds three basic ele- 
ments in Indian character ; belief in the Great Spirit, 
respect for personal authority in things religious, and 
the sense of need of vital relationship w^ith the spirit- 
ual world. Dr. Eastman (Quart. Journ. S. A. I., 1, 

[26] 




SA BATISTE PERROTE 
A descendant of Nicolas Perrot 
In his costume as Chief Medicine Man. 

French-Sioux. See p. 161. 



The Original American 

1915) speaks of the ''spirit of his democracy, the very 
essence of patriotism and justice between man and 
man" as a contribution to our own ideals, now recog- 
nized by painter, sculptor, author, scientist and 
preacher. Mr. John W. Converse (ib.), says, "his rev- 
erence, his honor, his hospitality, his bravery, his 
passionate love of freedom and independence ' ' are ' ' a 
few of many Indian qualities which must be pres- 
erved. ' ' 

The impressions of early French travellers appear 
to bear out the opinions of present day Indians just 
quoted. Nicolas Perrot, coureur du hois and later in- 
terpreter between the Indians and three successive 
governors of New France, who in 1671, acting for the 
King of France, took possession of the Northwest, ob- 
serves, in "Indian Tribes of the Upper Mississipi, " 
which Mr. James Douglas (op. cit.) calls "the best 
account we have of the Indians of the Upper Lakes, ' ' 
that the Indians have both good and bad moral traits, 
their hospitality surpasses all that is general among 
Europeans. In these respects Perrot 's editor, Jules 
Tailhan, (Translation by Miss Emma Helen Blair, p. 
138), finds that Perrot "falls far short of the reality." 
If any one has a misfortune or accident, Perrot con- 
tinues (p. 137), the entire village goes to console him, 
men for the men, women for the women. ' ' The justice 
among them is very great, he goes on ; in a case of mur- 
der being committed upon one of another village or 
tribe, all in the incriminated village bear a part in the 
forfeit. To this Tailhan adds that among the Hurons, 

[27] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

if in case of theft the actual offender cannot be found, 
the nearest village is held responsible (a view which 
reminds one of a certain Mosaic law which provides, 
in case of an undetected criminal, that atonement shall 
be made by the inhabitants of the nearest village, 
Deut. 21 : 1-9), the crime being punished rather than 
the criminal. 

As Perrot finds the Indians very cowardly, Tai- 
Ihan supplements, "not cowardly, though cautious." 
Their idea of courage is not ours, but they are ' ' almost 
as brave as the heroes of Homer." An anonymous 
author adds ''there is no temerity among them," He 
possibly had in mind the practice ascribed to the war- 
like Iroquois, of sending three messages of peace to 
the enemy before engaging in war, a practice which 
again reminds us of the Mosaic code.^ 

"Lazy" and "Indian" seem still almost to form 
a hyphenated word in the white man's language. In- 
telligent investigation of the economic condition of the 
Indians before the white man's appearance on the 
scene might show that though their industries were 
not such as are essential in the present state of civili- 
zation, nor pursued with the same motive of acquiring 
a surplus of commodities, yet the people were by no 
means indolent or lazy. The existing assumption is 
chiefly due, perhaps, to the manifest indisposition of a 

" We read in the Penn. Colonial Records (1768) that "Scarrooyady 
said 'The Great Being who lives above has ordered us to send 
Three messages of Peace before we make war.' '' Scarouyady 
the ''Half-King", was an Oneida chief of prominence in the 
middle of 18th century, a firm friend of the English colonists and 
as active an enemy of the French. He was with Braddock at the 
time of his defeat. 

[28] 



The Original American 

large number of Indians to cultivate their Reservation 
lands. This indisposition indeed hardly surprises 
those who know the story of the frequent removals of 
Indians from lands long cultivated by them to un- 
broken if not barren regions. In 1865, the Hon. D. M. 
Cooley, Commissioner of Indian affairs, wrote sym- 
pathetically of the enforced removal of the Winne- 
bagoes from their homes in the ''very garden of Min- 
nesota," "where they were independent and happy 
and always loyal to the government and friendly to 
the whites, " to a place where they would have starved 
and whence they were forced again to migrate. Two 
years later the then Commissioner reported his view 
that the Winnebagoes "have a just claim against 
government on account of their removal from Min- 
nesota at their own expense/' (Italics mine). Com- 
missioner Parker in 1870 reported to the Secretary of 
the Interior (Cox) that certain bands of Potawato- 
mies and Winnebagoes in Wisconsin objected to being 
removed, as they owned or leased land which they were 
cultivating. 

Bishop Walker, making a plea for the Osages in 
1884, after their enforced removal, says "their newly 
allotted land is largely untillable. The rations which 
the Government provides are only sufficient to keep 

them on the ragged edge of starving and this is 

the benevolent provision of the United States for its 

wards — peacable, loyal wards, too the marvel is 

that in their wretchedness, their hunger and absolute 
despair, they have not risen and revenged themselves 

[29] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

in some way. " " They are a worthy people, ' ' he adds. 
The intelligence of the Indian within certain lines 
is probably doubted by none. La Potherie in his His- 
toire (17th century, translated by Miss Emma Helen 
Blair) shows a shrewd apprehension of Indian charac- 
teristics, mental and physical: "These peoples whom 
we treat as savages are very brave, capable leaders, 
good soldiers, very discreet and subtle politicians, 
shrewd, given to dissimulation (at that period 
deemed an important part of diplomacy among Euro- 
pean nations, and by no means instanced by La Po- 
therie as other than a virtue), understanding perfectly 
their own interests, and knowing very well how to 
carry out their purposes." An interesting illustra- 
tion of Indian intelligence, much older than La Po- 
therie, referred to by some early chroniclers but only 
recently clearly understood by our Indian agents, is 
found in the system of ' ' Winter Counts, ' ' practiced by 
the western Indians. Incidentally it bears witness to 
the prodigious powers of memory of an unlettered peo- 
ple. Mr. Samuel La Pointe, the metis agent at Pine 
Ridge, S. D. writes: "I have a 'winter count' in my 
desk that starts from the year 1759, which year is 
recognized" by the Sioux Indians as the "winter or 
year when the people scattered ; ' ' the following year, 
1760, is known as "the winter when the fishers were 
killed," and so on down to 1910, "the winter or year of 
the death of Red Cloud; this year (1913) will be 
known in the Indians' 'winter count' as 'the year of 
the death of Hollow Horn Bear.' " 

[30] 



The Original American 

The Blackfeet, who have been characterized as 
''fierce, yet gentle," are an outstanding instance of 
loyalty to a government that has not always been fair 
to them. This tribe (properly called Siksika) was a 
hunting tribe and was never at war with the United 
States, (H. A. I. art. Siksika) though in the early days 
its general attitude was hostile. Gen. Parker, when 
Indian Commissioner (1870), wrote of them as ''a na- 
tion called hostile, but the Agent thinks it is because 
they are badly treated." Surely they had reason to 
deem themselves "badly treated" in the years 1833 to 
1840, when coincidently with the extinction of the buf- 
falo, which had afforded them their chief subsistence, 
their rations were cut off by Government, in conse- 
quence of which some six hundred of them died of 
starvation. At this writing (March 1916) many of 
them are still in a starving condition. 

Yet when three years ago (1913) a delegation of 
their chiefs came East for President Wilson's Inaugu- 
ration, they paid a visit to Carlisle Indian School at 
Commencement, and in the course of the "experience 
meeting" which is a feature of that occasion, the aged 
Chief Hollow Horn Bear, through an interpreter, made 
an address which was a dignified expression at once of 
a deep sense of the grievances of his tribe and of gen- 
uine loyalty and fidelity to the Government. Highly 
significant was the remark of Mr. A. C. Parker to the 
Indian students on that occasion: "You can sing 'My 
Country, 'tis of Thee, ' as none others can. ' ' 

The death of Hollow Horn Bear in Washington, 
[31] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

on his return from attending tlie Indian ceremonies 
on Staten Island shortly after the Inauguration, will 
be remembered. He was not a head chief of the Black- 
feet, but by reason of his great age and his superior 
intelligence was held in the highest respect by his tribe. 
That he was capable, even at an advanced age, of 
adopting new views was shown during his visit to Car- 
lisle. Always until then opposed to sending Indian 
children away from home for education, after examin- 
ing that school he confessed to an entire change of 
opinion. 

Notwithstanding his reputation for taciturnity, 
amounting apparently even to surliness, the Indian is 
fiiiKlaiiieulally social. This appears not only in his 
til inking in terms of clan, band, tribe, while whites 
think in terms of the individual, but in the construc- 
tion of the Indian family. Husband and wife, though 
of the same tribe, must belong to different gentes or 
elans of that tribe; tlieir children therefore have cer- 
tain rights in and owe certain duties to the two clans 
or gentes thus united. (J. N. B. Hewitt, art. Tribe, 
II. A. I.: 2:814). 

The tribal organization naturally conforms to this 
inherently social ideal. ''In order to constitute a tribe 

a i)eople must ])ossess a more or less connnon 

mental cojitent, a definite sum of knowledge, beliefs 

and sentiments, and must also exhibit mental 

endowments and characteristics that are likewise felt 
to be common, whose functioning results in unity of 
purpose, in patriotism and in what is called common 

[32] 



The Original American 

sense." (Ibid.) The racial consciousness of the Indian 
is therefore strong to a degree that it is difficult for the 
white to appreciate. Dean Inge ("Studies of English 
Mystics") has lately reminded us that ''modern psy- 
chological science ascribes great importance to the 
racial consciousness as a factor in individual charac- 
ter ; " and here perhaps we shall find a key to much in 
Indian nature and in Indian actions that have hitherto 
puzzled us. At least we may understand that that 
common mental content of which Prof. Hewitt speaks, 
and which more than geographical position, more even 
than kinship, is the bond of an Indian ''nation," de- 
serves sympathetic study. 

The proverbial hospitality of the Indian has a 
deep affinity with this essentially social nature of his. 
No w^onder that he finds it difficult to understand the 
high moral ground on which we white folk justify our 
so different practice. On the contrary, he distinctly 
doubts its high morality, and accounts for it on 
grounds little flattering to our self-esteem. Mr. Leupp, 
in his little study of ' ' Red Man 's Land, ' ' quotes from 
Chief Canestogo, of the Onondagas, an utterance very 
much to the purpose in this connection : 

"You know our practice: If a white man, in 
travelling through our country, enters one of our cab- 
ins, we warm him if he is cold, we give him meat and 
drink that he may allay his hunger and thirst, and 
spread soft furs for him to rest and sleep on. We de- 
mand nothing in return. 

"But if I go into a white man's house and ask for 
[ 33 ] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

victuals and drink they say, 'Where is your money?' 
And if I have none they say, 'Get out, you Indian 
dog!' You see, they have not yet learned the little 
good things our mothers taught us when we were 
children." (Italics mine). 

The love of Indian parents for their children has 
been often noted, but the intelligence of their affection 
and their high standard of child culture indicated in 
the above words, is borne out by many Indians of re- 
cent times. 

We are told by Sarah Winnemucca (Mrs. Hop- 
kins), the "heroine of the Bannock war," Gen. 0. O. 
Howard's interpreter, a full blood Piute, (who by her 
lectures in Boston so alarmed the venal Indian agents 
of her day that they retaliated by attacking her charac- 
ter. Judge Bromfield of Nevada effectually refuting 
the calumniators), that all Indian mothers teach their 
children "manners and refinements" and also "na- 
ture," which especially in its aspect as orenda ' has so 
large a part in the religion of the Indian. She dwells 
upon the high toned morality taught by Indian moth- 
ers to their children ; and there is perhaps not so much 
absurdity as might appear in her conviction that 
Christian society has "missed the moral reformation 

■^ "Orenda"; the Iroquois word for the spirit which was supposed to 
be inherent in natural forces. The Algonquin "manitou" and 
the Siouan "mahopa" "correspond approximately if not exactly 
with this Iroquois term in use and signification.'"' (H. A. I. 2, 
148, art. Orenda.) Hence arose the assumption of the whites 
that the Algonquian word manitou was the Indian term for God. 
Dr. Moifett, in his very intelligent work already cited, so ex- 
plains it and also gives "orenda" as the Iroquoian word for 
God; a very natural mistake, since "the possession of magic 
power is the distinctive charaqteristic of all the gods." (H. A. I. 
art. cit.) 

[34] 



The Original American 

it might have had if the white people had become 
acquainted with the noble Five Nations and others 
whom they have exterminated." 

Mr. Leupp expatiates upon the ''perpetual good 
humor" of Indian children, who seldom quarrel, and 
are always sunny and kindly. Perhaps Dr. Moffett's 
observation (op. cit.) that "there are no severe words 
in Indian languages" throws light upon this disposi- 
tion of Indian children. Dr. Eastman ("Indian Boy- 
hood") gives the same imi3ression, and to a degree ex- 
plains it by noting the respect with which parents treat 
their children. Perhaps the fact that children are 
never given nicknames, or what the French call ' ' little 
names, ' ' illustrates this respect, with the fact that each 
significant act of the child as it progresses in years is 
likely to result in the gift of "a new name." 

The ethnologist, Mr. Francis La Flesche, a 
French-Omaha, says in the preface to his autobio- 
graphical story ' ' The Middle Five, ' ' that every Omaha 
child receives careful instruction from infancy not 
only in "courtesy" but in "the grammatical use of his 
mother tongue," no baby talk being permitted. The 
full significance of this statement appears only to those 
who understand something of the characteristics of 
Indian languages, not only "the manifold variety of 
Indian linguistic families, embracing a multitude of 
languages and dialects," but "their rich vocabularies, 

flexible grammatical methods above all their 

capacity of indefinite expansion, corresponding to cul- 
ture growth." "The intricacies of Indian languages 

[35] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

are even yet but partially understood," continues Mr. 
H. W. Henshaw in his masterly article on the subject 
(H. A. I. 1, 579). It is therefore not surprising that 
Mr. La Flesche should deem that "the misconception 
of Indian life and character so common among white 
people has been largely due to their ignorance of In- 
dian modes of thought, beliefs, ideas and native insti- 
tutions." 

That saving grace, a sense of humor, has been 
recognized in the Indian, notwithstanding his pro- 
verbial taciturnity, by all who know him well. Such 
expert students of Indian character as Dr. Moffett and 
Mr. Leupp love to dwell on the mirthfulness and ready 
repartee of the Indian. Mr. Alanson Skinner of the 
American Museum of Natural History, a Menominee 
by adoption, urging the importance of recording and 
preserving the unwritten Indian literature and folk- 
lore, remarks upon the humor with which these nat- 
ional traditions are permeated. Dr. Charles Eastman 
(op. cit.), protesting against the notion that the In- 
dian has no sense of humor and no faculty for mirth 
says, ' ' I don 't believe I ever heard a real hearty laugh 
away from the Indian's fireside. I have often spent 
an entire evening in laughing with them till I could 
laugh no more However, Indian humor con- 
sists as much in gestures and inflections of the voice 
as in words, and is really untranslatable." 

All this is a strong witness to that idealizing fac- 
ulty, which, though we admit that it is one of the 
most precious endowTnents of the Frenchman, we have 

[ 36 ] 




I 



JOHN NAPOLEON BRINTON HEWITT 

French-Ttiscarora 

Ethnologist of the Smithsonian Institution. 

See p. 181. 



The Original American 

not so easily recognized in the Indian. Even the 
strong belief in magic power which was an essential 
element in the effectiveness of every tribe was more 
than a vulgar belief in sorcery ; it was the outflowering 
of their religious attitude toward nature, and an im- 
portant witness to the idealism of this people. 

Of this idealism Indian art and especially Indian 
music/ which we are only beginning to appreciate, are 
telling illustrations. No one could hear the Carlisle 
School band render the Indian March, composed by an 
Indian student, so thoroughly Indian in spirit, even to 
the artistic adaptation of the war whoop, without feel- 
ing the idealism that pulsates all through it. 

The well informed reader of today has better 
sources of information on these subjects than were 
accessible to the ever-to-be-admired Parkman, yet there 
are still many who show like ignorance with him of the 
religious instinct of the Indian; "The primitive In- 
dian was as savage in his religion as in his life. He 
was divided between fetish worship and that next de- 
gree of religious development which consists of the 
worship of deities embodied in the human form ..... 
His gods were no whit better than himself. ' ' ( Intro- 
duction to ''The Jesuits.") "We of today may learn 
better from such men of Indian ancestry as Mr. Ar- 
thur C. Parker and Prof. Hewitt. They dwell with 



^ Miss Nathalie Curtis made a notable contribution to that under- 
standing of the Indian mind of which we white folk stand in 
need when she published (in 1907) "The Indian Book", con- 
cerning which Mr. Roosevelt wrote to her from the White House, 
"These songs cast a new light upon the depth and dignity of In- 
dian thought." 



[37] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

delight upon the lofty ideals and stately ritual of their 
ancestors, whose religion was founded upon that nob- 
lest of sentiments, thanksgiving, and found in the life 
of all nature the breath of him "who holds the skies." 
The "beauty and power" of the Iroquois rituals of 
Death and of Mourning, the dramatic character of the 
ritual of Condolence, founded upon the three words, 
peace, righteousness, power, — a ritual of which, say 
these gentlemen, no one person now knows the whole, 
but of which by diligent research they have succeeded 
in piecing together a large part — speak a high range 
not only of religious but of intellectual capacity, with 
a remarkable facility of poetic expression. The Iro- 
quois are indeed the intellectual superiors of most In- 
dian nations, though not of all of them. The Chero- 
kees and the Sioux, not to speak of the southern In- 
dian races, are in many respects their equals, and in 
some their superiors. 

Though religion and morality do not always go 
hand in hand even among whites who profess and call 
themselves Christians, we find, with the genuinely re- 
ligious spirit universal among Indian races, a high 
standard of morality, and even of decency, which may 
well put some whites to the blush. A recent illustra- 
tion comes from the Nez Perces, whose children had 
been sent to the public school. The parents presented 
to the authorities this petition: "The long-haired In- 
dians request that the whites in the school do not swear 
or use vile language with the Indians." An Indian 
policeman at Wolf Point, Mont., resigned his position 

[ 38 ] 



The Original American 

because his superior officer used profane language 
(Moffett, op. cit. p. 272). 

This high standard of morality is especially note- 
worthy in sexual relations. There is no record of the 
violation of the marriage vow by any Indian woman 
married to a Frenchman. It may surprise some among 
us, familiar though we may be with our own early his- 
tory, to be reminded that careful investigation of the 
records of our Indian wars fails to discover, in the 
bitter narrative of the atrocities perpetrated by "Red- 
skins" upon the whites, the slightest evidence that any 
woman captive was ever violated by her captor or by 
any other Indian.^ There are instances of white women 
being tortured by Indians — in Indiana, after ex- 
treme provocation, with offences against some of the 
holiest instincts of Indian nature — fidelity to the 
pledged word, and religious reverence for the land. 

This remarkable standard of sexual morality is 
fundamental to Indian character and is based upon 
the Indian idea of woman. Notwithstanding the ap- 
parently unchivalrous committal of agricultural labor 
to the women — a division of occupation which in fact 
is necessary in every primitive society where the mili- 

^ So Schoolcraft, whose first wife was an Irish Chippewa ; and so, at 
the present day, the distinguished ethnologist of the Smithsonian 
Institution, Mr. J. N. B. Hewitt, who also states that no house of 
ill-fame has ever existed on any Indian Reservation. Mr. A. C. 
Parker, who is of the Seneca tribe, tells of his white teacher in 
Salamanca, N. Y.. who used to walk to and from school along the 
railroad track. She often met drunken and bad Indians, but was 
never afraid of them; of whites she was afraid. Mr. Alanson 
Skinner observes that some tribes west of the Mississippi today 
afford exceptions to this high sexual standard. It is perhaps not 
fair even if possible to inquire how far these western Indians of 
the present day may have been influenced by intercourse with 
whites. 

[39] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

tary spirit is dominant, and of which cultured Ger- 
many and France and even England and our own 
country are now giving an illustration — the low 
standard of female morality which is hardly separable 
from a servile condition was absolutely unknown. Mrs. 
Kinzie (op. cit.) says of the Winnebagoes among whom 
she lived what might be said of any other tribe : * ' The 
strictest sense of female propriety is a distinguishing 
trait among them." This would be impossible if the 
males of the race were sexually immoral. 

The Indian considers the female sex to be inher- 
ently sacred, as standing in a peculiar relation to the 
earth, which is the mother of them all. It is Mr. 
Hewitt's conviction that Indian women would never 
have sold the land to the whites. In fact the sale of 
land was to the Indian unthinkable. ''It was impos- 
sible for a chief, family, clan or any section of a tribe 
legally to sell or give away to aliens, white or red, any 
part of the tribal domain," says Mr. H. W. Henshaw 
(H. A. I. 2 : 288), ''and the inevitable consequence of 
illegal sales was bad feeling, followed often by repudia- 
tion of the contract by the tribe as a whole. Attempts 
by the whites to enforce these sales were followed by 
disorder and bloodshed, often by prolonged wars." 
The almost isolated case already mentioned, of the 
torture of white women by Indians, occurred in con- 
nection with a flagrant violation of the rights of the 
Miamis and their confederates by settlers in Indiana 
from the English Colonies (the French had long been 
living amoug tliem in peace and amity), enforced by 

[40] 



The Original AmeriCxVN 

St. Claire's expedition in 1791. The uprising of the 
tribes was a determined and for a time successful at- 
tempt to stop the occupation of their land by Ameri- 
cans. The recital by Blue Jacket, the Shawnee chief, 
in reply to St. Claire's demands, of the deeds of the 
''Big Knives" could hardly have been pleasant hear- 
ing, even to one so determined as was the American 
officer to find bad qualities in the Indians only, and 
none in the whites. The essential justice of the In- 
dians' claim was admitted. The United States Com- 
missioners, at a great meeting with these Confederated 
Indians (twenty two tribes who, in accordance with 
former definite treaties, had persisted in refusing to 
consider anything but the Ohio River their boundary) , 
in 1793 acknowledged that they were in their right, but 
urged that it was now impossible to move the whites, 
and offered a large sum in payment. The Indians 
fiercely rejected the offer, but suggested a way out: 
''Divide this large sum of money which you have 
offered us among these people (American settlers), 
give them each a share of your proffered annual pay- 
ments; further, give them all the United States must 
spend in armies to fight Indians, and there will be 

more than enough to satisfy them We want 

peace. Restore to us our country and we shall be 
enemies no more. ' ' No ruler, they insisted, had a right 
to permit any one to buy Indian lands. 

It was all a question of the point of view, if we 
overlook for a moment the cruelties of the disagree- 
ment. The Americans made no attempt to understand 

[41] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

the Indian view point, the Indians were incapable, 
both by long tradition and by inexperience, of under- 
standing that of the Americans. 

It will do us no harm to remember, when learning 
of the cruelty of the Indian, that the white man was 
not above imitating him, even in the State founded 
by the benevolent Penn, friend of Indians. Bounties 
were offered for Indian scalps, not only in Penn- 
sylvania, but also, in accordance with the example 
there set, in Ohio ; not for those of men only but also 
of women and children, if above ten years. '^For 

males above ten years scalped and killed $134 for 

females above ten years scalped and killed $50." In 
both these states Christian Indians were hunted, and 
murdered like dogs, shot in church as they knelt to 
pray. (A. C. Parker, op. cit.). 

In fact the ''treaties" by which Indians of many 
tribes "ceded" lands to whites were not by them un- 
derstood as giving absolute rights in perpetuity — an 
act to an Indian absolutely unthinkable — but simply 
the right of occupation and exploitation — a sort of 
perpetual life-rent. 

An instance in point occurred when in 1797 Great 
Britain and the United States undertook to divide 
between them the lands of the Ojibways (Chippewas) 
on the border of what is now Minnesota, this being the 
agelong home of this people. The bewilderment which 
they felt at the proposal, so shocking to their religious 
susceptibilities, would have given rise to war, but for 
the explanations and persuasions of Jean Baptiste 

[42 1 



The Original American 

Cadotte, whom they loved and trusted, and of whom 
we shall hear later. 

It is the opinion of the early annalist La Potherie 
{Histoire) that ''the existence of a high ethical feeling 
toward strangers (he is referring especially to cap- 
tives) is often in evidence, even when no self interest 
is to be served," an ethical feeling which easily allies 
itself with the chivalry of the French. 

In strong contrast with this ethical feeling was 
the murder, by their white guests, of the Cherokees 
who helped Washington in his later expedition against 
Fort Du Quesne ; and the remonstrance of Chief Otta- 
kullakulla, to those of his braves who urged retalia- 
tion, should go down to our children 's children in their 
school text-books. Urging them not to violate the 
laws of hospitality, but to conduct those "who came 
to us in the confidence of a pledged friendship safely 
back within their own confines before we take up the 
hatchet," he all unconsciously emphasized the woes 
that our forefathers brought upon themselves by sheer 
stupid treachery. 

Indian loyalty to the pledged word is indeed pro- 
verbial, and is all the more worthy of recognition in 
view of frequent painful evidence of the contrary char- 
acteristic, in its dealings with this people, on the part 
of the American Government, which, as General Sher- 
man said, has ' ' made a hundred treaties with Indians 
and never kept one." It is worth while for us to re- 
member with humiliation the action of Congress, which 
in 1783 passed, and in 1789 confirmed (the action be- 

[43] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

ing reaffirmed by sixteen states when organized) the 
following: ''The utmost good faith shall always be 
observed toward the Indians ; their land and property 
shall never be taken from them without their consent, 
and in their property, rights and liberty they shall 
never be invaded nor disturbed unless in just, lawful 
ivars authorized hy Congress (italics mine) ; but laws 
founded on justice and humanity shall from time to 
time be made for preventing wrong done to them, and 
for preserving peace and friendship with them." 
(Cited by Moffett, op. cit. p. 36) ''The day will come," 
said that noble friend of the Indian, Bishop Whipple, 
"when our children's children will tell with hushed 
whispers the story of our shame, and marvel that our 
fathers dared so trifle with truth and righteousness." 
(Quoted by Moffett, op. cit.) 

It was of the original American, not of the white 
man who is now in possession of his heritage, that 
Wendell Phillipps was speaking when he said, "Neith- 
er Greece nor Germany, nor French nor Scotch can 
show a prouder record than the Indian in his heroic 
stand for justice and right." Far too many conflicts 
between our government and the Indians have arisen 
from their deep recognition of the importance of jus- 
tice and right, coming in conflict with the blindness of 
the ruling race to the essential nature of these prin- 
ciples. 

The present Secretary of the Interior (1915), 
whose clear appreciation of the essential elements of 
the present state of the Indian problem augurs well 

[44] 



The Original American 

for both parties to it, has said that for one hundred 
years the Indian has been spun round like a blinded 
child in a game of blind man \s buff. ' ' Treated as an 
enemy at first, overcome, driven from his lands, nego- 
tiated with most formally as an independent nation, 
given by treaty a distinct boundary which was never 
to be changed while water runs and grass grows, ^ he 
later found himself pushed beyond that boundary line, 
negotiated with again, and then set down upon a reser- 
vation, half captive, half protege — What could an 
Indian, simply thinking and direct of mind, make of 
all this?" 

Nothing, surely could he make of "all this" than 
that ethical confusion of mind which, as Dr. Carlos 
Montezuma suggests, is the greatest of all the wrongs 
which his people have suffered at the hands of the 
whites. ''Originally the Indian only knew that truth 
and righteousness governed all things, but the deceit 
and hypocrisy of the whites have made him doubt .... 
I challenge any paleface who can meet the fidelity even 
unto death that exists today and always has existed in 
the heart of every Indian in this country."^ 



1 The usual formula found in countless early treaties. See American 
State Papers passim. 

' An illustration not only of fidelity unto death but of the capacity to 
be fired by the desire for freedom may be found in the Wappin- 
gers of the Hudson who were friendly to the Patriots. A writer 
in the Quarterly Journal S. A. I. (I. p. 83) says that the first 
blood shed in the Revolution was that of these Indians. They 
were at Bunker Hill. 

[45] 



Ill 

Indians of Mixed Blood — A General View 



T 



1 6/- I AHE French mixed-blood," said the Seneca In- 
dian and Indian Commissioner, General Ely 
Samuel Parker, a man of note in whose veins 
ran both English and French blood — "stands out as 
superior to the full blood or the Anglo-Saxon mixed 
blood ; not so much in the present generation, perhaps, 
but in the former he was a man of mark. ' ' 

It would, however, be unjust to some Indians of 
Anglo-Saxon blood to make this assertion too sweep- 
ing. That the intermarriage of Indians with men or 
women of British, and later of American stock, has not 
in general resulted well, is no doubt in some degree to 
be accounted for by certain adverse circumstance pre- 
vailing in the Colonies and later in the United States. 
But to the writer it appears chiefly to be due to the in- 
herent lack of sympathy between these and the Indian. 
The French, as I hope to show, were better adapted by 
natural characteristics to understand and be under- 
stood by the native peoples of this country (and the 
history of recent French colonization enables us to add, 
of any country) than men of other nationalities. 

Mixed-bloods descended from Scotch or Irish 
fathers appear as a general thing to be of a higher 
grade than those of English or American parentage 
(especially in the Canadian Northwest, says Dr. 

[46] 



Indians of Mixed Blood — A General View 

Speck). We learn that there are more characters of 
importance among the Cherokees (relatives of the 
intelligent Iroquois) than among other tribes, their 
mixed-bloods being as a rule of Scotch and Irish, with 
a little Huguenot blood. The noted Cherokee chief, 
John Ross, who took his Scottish father's name, stout 
defender of the rights of the tribe in their national 
territory, is a case in point. The Hon. Elijah Sells, 
former superintendent of Indian Affairs, found 
among the Cherokees ''many persons of culture who 
would be ornaments to any circle, not excluding the 
halls of Congress." It was of the Cherokees, while 
they were still in their ancestral homes on the Atlantic 
seaboard, that William Bartram wrote, ' ' as moral men 

they stand in no need of European civilization ; 

they are just, honest, liberal and hospitable to 
strangers, considerate, loving and affectionate to their 
wives and relations, fond of their children, industrious, 
frugal, temperate and persevering." After spending 
' ' weeks and months ' ' among them he had ' ' never seen 
the least contention or wrangling among them, " . . . . 
' ' never saw one cross to his wife. " ' ' In this case, ' ' he 
observes, ''they stand as examples of reproof to the 

most civilized nations indeed their wives merit 

their esteem and the most gentle treatment, they being 
industrious, frugal, careful, loving and affectionate." 
Each adult member of this largest tribe in the 
United States (41,798 souls) has at last been given 
his allotment of land, and now perhaps for the first 
time in eighty years they may forget that ' ' journey of 

[47] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

horror, starvation and death, ' ' during which one quar- 
ter of the tribe was left in graves along the w^ay, when 
the United States Government, forgetting its solemn 
confirmation to the tribe of the remnant of their vast 
eastern lands ' ' as long as rivers run and grass grows, ' ' 
drove them from the Atlantic seaboard to the Indian 
Territory. 

Alexander Robinson (Chee-chee-long-way), son of 
a Scotch officer in the British army, who had been 
elected by his mother's tribe Chief of the Potawato- 
mies, — those Potawatomies whom English and Amer- 
icans thought fierce and cruel, but whom the early 
French settlers had found to be " the most docile and 
affectionate toward the French of all the savages of 
the west ; ' ' whose ' ' natural politeness and readiness to 
oblige, ' ' says Tailhan, ' ' was extended to strangers, ' ' — 
gave full proof of these characteristics of his tribe at 
the time of the Fort Dearborn massacre (1812). In 
that hour of tragic horror he and his French-Indian 
wdfe, Catherine Chevallier, sheltered the fleeing whites, 
and both are held in grateful remembrance in Chicago 
to this day. Robinson was later interpreter for Gen. 
Lewis Cass with the Chippewas in the treaty of Prairie 
du Chien. 

Owen Mackenzie, son of a Scotch-Indian trader, 
is celebrated for ''his great feat in bringing the hostile 
Blackfeet ('fierce yet gentle' the early French had 
found them) to the treaty of 1830- '31, and thus op.en- 
ing up their country to trade. The descendants of the 
Scotch Colonel Dickson, commander-in-chief of all the 

[48] 



Indians of Mixed Blood — A General View 

Indians who fought against the Americans in the War 
of 1812, who married a Sioux widow and at the close 
of the war became an American citizen and ' ' raised a 
family of children and grandchildren of whom any 
state might be proud," (letter from the Rev. J. P. 
Williamson) — all these are examples of Scotch mixed 
bloods. 

Among mixed-bloods whose white ancestry is not 
traced is the Cherokee Chief Sequoyah, who by his in- 
vention of the Cherokee alphabet turned his tribe from 
illiterate savages to literates; thus enabling Elias 
Boudinot, a (possibly) full blood Cherokee who 
adopted the name of the philanthropist to whom he 
owed his education to aid in the translation of the Gos- 
pels into his native tongue. Jolly, the half-breed Cher- 
okee chief, adoptive father of Gen. Sam Houston and 
uncle of his wife, ''very plain, prudent and unassum- 
ing in dress and manners, a Franklin among his 
countrymen, and affectionately called the 'beloved' 
father, ' ' says Nuttall ( ' ' Travels " ) , has yet a bad name 
in the Handbook of American Indians for intrigue and 
disloyalty to his tribe. But after all is said in praise 
of mixed-bloods of British ancestry, their services in 
the development of this country sink into insignifi- 
cance beside those of mixed-bloods of French lineage. 

This is perhaps the best place in which to narrate 
the services to this country of that Indian already 
named, who inherited both Anglo-Saxon and French 
blood — General Ely Samuel Parker of the Seneca 
Tribe. Lawyer and civil engineer, forty years Grand 

[49] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

Sachem of his tribe, whose distinguished services in 
the Vicksburg campaign won him a place on Gen. 
Grant's staff as Adjutant, Colonel and Military Sec- 
retary, it was he who drew up the terms of Gen. Lee's 
surrender. He subsequently rose to be a general of 
cavalry in the United States Army, and after being 
Commissioner of Indian Affairs and holding other 
national offices, completed his honorable career by aid- 
ing the ethnologist, Louis H. Morgan, in writing his 
' ' Legends of the Iroquois. ' ' 



[50] 



IV 
French Mixed-Bloods of the Middle West 

IT was not only in regions now Canadian and in 
onr own Northw^est that alliances between 
French and Indians were frequent ; our Middle 
West bears many traces of them. It was but a few 
years after La Salle passed that way, leaving a path- 
etic memory in Fort Heart-break (Creve-coeur) on 
the Illinois River/ that a number of French hunters 
and trappers followed Father Marest to the old In- 
dian village of Kaskaskia and married among its 
daughters. The records of baptism begin with 1695, 
all of full-bloods, but soon the names of French fa- 
thers appear. Rather amusing is it to discover in those 
church registers of Kaskaskia, rescued after long dis- 
appearance by Professor Alvord of the University 
of Illinois, the difficulties of the good Fathers in 
entering names of Indian mothers and godmothers 
(names like Marthe Me-tou-nou-eth-amon-co-ne, Do- 
matilla Te-hue-gou-anak-iga-bou-cona, and worse) ; 
and their desperate resort to the Greek alphabet to 
render the unfamiliar sounds. 

Michel Aco, (Accault) who guided if he did not 



^ Joseph Wallace ("Illinois and Louisiana under French Rule") says 
that the Fort was not so named because of the desertion of La 
Salle's men, but after the fortress of Creve-coeur in Brabant, 
lately taken by the French and demolished. This is possible in 
view of the fact that La Salle's faithful friend and almost ''alter 
ego'', Henri de Tonti, had taken part in that victory; bvit the 
question is still an open one. 



[51] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

actually lead^ Hennepin's expedition to the Upper 
Mississippi, married Maria Aramapiochicone, daugh- 
ter of the chief of the Kaskaskias. She was one of 
Father Marest's first converts, and of great service to 
him in teaching the children of the tribe. Her son, 
Pierre Aco, was the first white (mixed-blood) child 
baptized in "Old Kaskaskia;" he lived to be a citizen 
of the second Kaskaskia, that "little Paris in the 
wilderness," in which, in the 18th century, was gath- 
ered more of grace and refined charm than could be 
found elsewhere in what is now the United States. 

The daughters of the Piankeshaws early inter- 
married with the French traders at Ouiatenon, a post 
near the later Yincennes, and French blood may still 
be traced in the older families of that city, which, 
however, in the early days was far from equaling 
Kaskaskia in either refinement or charm. It shares 
nevertheless with Kaskaskia the honor of having wel- 
comed, at much cost, the dawn of republican ideas as 
represented by George Rogers Clark and his small 
but intrepid force. 

In 1790 the people of Vincennes sent to Winthrop 
Sargent, Secretary of the Territory and vested with 
the powers of Governor and Commander in chief, a 
letter expressing a sense of the privilege of beholding 
"the principles of free government unfolding among 
us," and signed by Antoine Gamelin, Magistrate, 
(father, probably, of the future "messenger") with 

2 Prof. E. G. Mason ("Kaskaskia and its Parish Records") is of the 
opinion that Aco may have headed the expedition of which "that 
intrepid falsifier" Hennepin, claimed the credit. 

[52] 



French Mixed Bloods of the Middle West 

four additional French and two English names, as 
well as those of Francis Vigo, military commandant 
and Henry Vanderburgh, major of militia. So ca- 
pable were these barely literate people of appreciating 
the significance of the new ideas. 

The American Government showed itself inca- 
pable of a reciprocal appreciation. The French set- 
tlers on the Wabash had long been trading with the 
Indians, when in the first third of the eighteenth cen- 
tury they received from them a large tract of land. 
Their right to this tract was never questioned during 
French supremacy, but their claim to this land, which 
they had held for nearly a hundred years, was not 
ratified by the United States, which at heavy cost 
they had aided in its conquest of the region. (J. B. 
Dillon, ''History of Indiana," p. 10). 

French mixed-bloods were indeed long the dom- 
inant race in that part of the country. So late as 
1855 all the electors' of Knox County, Ind., in which 
Vincennes is situated, were French mixed-bloods. "A 
very sociable people," says Mr. H. S. Cauthorn, the 
recent historian of Vincennes, who, though like other 
Americans he fails to apprehend the true character of 
the Indian, shows some apprehension of the results 
of intermarriage between them and the French. 
Their children, he says, "inherited all the virtues as 
well as the vices of the French and Indians in com- 
bination. From the French vivacity and good nature, 
from the Indian wild, roving and irascible traits of 
character. ' ' 

[53] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

Upon the serious and essentially religious social 
consciousness which we have found in the Indian — 
a seriousness by no means devoid of the capacity for 
humor, — the lightsome gayety of the French was 
engrafted with peculiarly happy results. The early 
traveller Flagg (''Far West," Western Travels, I, 
134), speaks of "that hapx)y harmony with their fer- 
ocious neighbors for which the early French were so 
remarkable." In soeial relations the result could 
hardly fail to be that charm of manner which univer- 
sal testimony accords to the French-Indian. 

The French mixed-bloods, says Robinson ("Great 
Fur Land"), are of "social disposition, having many 
children, of which there is usually a daughter who is 
sent to a convent school and learns to read and write. 
Dancing and the social round occupy them in winter, 
leaving the morrow to care for itself. They are fontl 
of color but have good artistic taste." This is no 
doubt a fairly accurate description of the more nom- 
adic group of this class, the bushrangers, hunters, 
trappers and others holding subordinate positions con- 
nected with the fur trade. We shall see them at their 
best in the early narratives of the Green Bay region — 
those reminiscences of the Langlades, the Grignons, 
the Viauds, the Porliers ("Wisconsin Historical Col- 
lections"), in which nearly all the prominent folk 
were metis, living with their kindly treated Indian 
slaves under the paternal rule of the aged Charles de 
Langlade, the French mixed-blood "Father of Wis- 
consin." We see them again at a lesser degree of 

[54 1 



French Mixed Bloods of the Middle West 

culture, but with similar characteristics, in the story 
of such a town as Prairie du Chien, at the mouth of 
the Wisconsin River, the old Indian village sold to 
Canadian traders in 1781, which since the later years 
of the 17th century had been a great mart for traffic 
(Prof. J. D. Butler in Wis. Hist. Col. X.), and which 
through all its history as Fort Crawford, Fort Shelby, 
Fort McKay, and in its various mutations of govern- 
mental relations, French, English and American, to 
the end of the 19th century was almost exclusively a 
metis town. ^'Old Fort Crawford, a settlement of 
French half-breeds called Prairie du Chien," it is 
called by Mrs. Charlotte Ouisconsin Clark Van Cleve 
in ''Threescore Years and Ten." This revered and 
beloved woman, whose recent death is still mourned 
in St. Paul, was born at Fort Crawford in 1821, 
scarcely an hour after the arrival of her parents on 
their way to the newly established Fort Snelling, later 
St. Paul, of which Captain Clark was to take com- 
mand. In that year the only white people within 
three hundred miles of Fort Snelling were shut in the 
hollow square of the fort, their only connection with 
the outside world being the bi-monthly mail brought 
by an Indian on a pony from the nearest settlement, 
Prairie du Chien, three hundred miles down the river. 
The newly made mother had ample experience of 
the kindliness of the metis of Prairie du Chien, into 
whose hands she was thrown. The relations between 
them appear always to have been friendly. We read 
of a visit paid by little Charlotte Clark and her 

[55] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

mother to the friends at Fort Crawford a few years 
later, going thither by boat on the Mississippi from 
Fort Snelling/ 

Some notion of the refinement of the French 
mixed-bloods at a relatively early period is given by 
Zebulon Pike, who in 1805, on his return from explor- 
ing the sources of the Mississippi, visited Prairie du 
Chien and found ''the furnishings of the houses de- 
cent those of the wealthy display a degree of 

elegance and taste." Their business enterprise was 
manifested in "the trail which they established over- 
land ' ' from their town ' ' directly west to Sioux Falls ' ' 
to facilitate the fur trade with the Omahas. 

Mr. Hazard finds in French mixed-bloods "a 
clear, but not strong moral sense." The German his- 
torian Mommsen found high moral qualities in the 
French race. "The French are like their hero, Ver- 
cingetorix," he says, ("History of Rome"). "They 
have charm, they fight for liberty, they respect the 
pledged word, they die for their convictions." The 
American people, influenced in childhood by school 
histories based upon works of English origin, have not 
always entertained so high an estimate of the French 
people, but we may now surely admit that the French 
mixed-blood has a dual inheritance of a high order; 
the idealism, the religious instinct, the social endow- 
ment, the genius for loyalty, with other qualities 

* It may be mentioned by way of parenthesis that the boat was so 
slow that all the children of a large party on board had chicken- 
pox and recovered before the end of the three hundred mile 
journey. 

[50] 



French Mixed Bloods of the Middle West 

which in varying degrees cha,racterize both the 
Frenchman and the Indian at their best. 

If it is to be expected that the outstanding char- 
acteristics of both ancestries shall meet in the mixed 
race, equally perhaps is it to be expected that the in- 
herited prejudices of generations with regard to both 
peoples should have perverted American judgment 
and blinded American eyes to the true character of 
the metis. He is not an angel, certainly not a super- 
man, but he has qualities and he has performances 
to his account which deserve recognition. 

Whatever may be the native intelligence of the 
Indian, the entire concensus of opinion on the part of 
those competent to form one is that the metis usually 
form the progressive part of the Indian population, 
being quick to learn, bright, and no more immoral 
than those around them. Nearly two and a half cen- 
turies ago Nicolas Perrot, that acute observer of In- 
dians, had ''always observed that the half-breeds (at 
this period all French) raised among the Indians 
were generally resolute, remarkably brave, and res- 
pectable in the nation." His opinion is borne out by 
countless illustrations down through the centuries. 

Many French mixed-bloods have given full proof 
of valor ; more than one has shown himself as capable 
of heroism as that child whose name unfortunately 
McKinney and Hall (''Indian Tribes" 2:116) omit 
to give, the twelve year old son of the Winnebago 
mixed-blood Wa-kam-ha-ka (son of a French trader 
and the Winnebago squaw Mon-ka-ush-ka) , of whom 

[57] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

these authors narrate that in 1834 he was in a small 
encampment of Winnebagoes when a band of Sauks 
and Foxes surprised it and killed all but this boy. The 
little hero fired a gun, killing a Sauk brave, then 
swam the Mississippi and brought the news to Fort 
Crawford at Prairie du Chien, thus enabling the agent 
at that post, by prompt interposition, to prevent a 
bloody war. The boy's father, who though half 
French was so much an Indian that his French fath- 
er 's name is not preserved, was ' ' a fine looking, grace- 
ful man," who first and last had eleven wives, (the 
Winnebagoes up to that time being polygamous). 
Though, as our authors say, he was "familiar with 
the current transactions of the day, ' ' he was ( perhaps 
not unnaturally, in view of the recorded dealings of 
our government with his tribe) ''obstinately opposed 
to all the benevolent plans of the American Govern- 
ment or individuals for civilizing his race. ' ' 

The necessity, if not the advantage, of removal 
westward was early recognized by the intelligent met- 
is Pierre Chartiers, who about 1830 led a number of 
his Shawnee fellow tribesmen from the mouth of the 
Conedogwinut Creek near Carlisle, Pa., to the banks 
of the Ohio a few miles below the present Pittsburgh, 
where in the vicinity of a creek which still bears his 
name he established a trading post."" Thence they 

^ If the Colonial Records of Pennsylvania werq our only sources, 
our opinion of Chartiers would be anything but favorable. For 
many years he was the object of the hatred and despair of the 
authorities of the Proprietory Government of that colony. Hav- 
ing a trading post on the Alleghany in 1745 (having "disposed 
of his effects" at Carlisle), he had "gone over to the enemy" 

[58] 



French Mixed Bloods of the Middle West 

eventvially went westward, joining their western kin- 
dred the Shawnees of Kentucky and Ohio at Shawnee- 
tow^n, which half a century later came into our history 
as Tippecanoe, the scene of the defeat by Gen. Har- 
rison of Tecumthe and the Prophet. Later, as we 
shall see, the remnant of the tribe removed to Kansas 
under a metis whose name is still in honor. 

Noel Mograin, a French Osage, was Gen. McCoy 's 
interpreter on an exploring expedition ordered by the 
Government in 1828 with a view to the removal of 
the Indians of Indiana and Illinois. The Kansa 
(Kansas) region was selected and thither we shall 
presently see the French mixed-blood, Medard Beau- 
bien, son of ' ' the first citizen of Chicago, ' ' Jean Bap- 
tiste Beaubien, leading a party of his Indian relatives. 



by accepting a military command under the French king. Quite 
naturally, the Proprietory Government feared him and regretted 
that he had not earlier been dealt with as he deserved, "but an 
Apprehension that the Shawnees (whose perfidious Blood partly 
runs in Chartier's Veins) might resent upon our Traders any 
severities upon him had saved him" (Memorial of the Govern- 
ment to the Assembly, "Col. Rec. Pa." IV. 75-77). Though he 
had persuaded a party of the "perfidious" Shawnees to remove 
with him "to a greater distance upon another River," the Gov- 
ernor never recovered from the deadly fear that "a Person of his 
Savage Temper" would "do us all the Mischief he can," and 
suggests that it would be well to attempt to conciliate the 
Shawnees. Thi.s dread runs through all the records of the time, 
though with no mention of any overt acts on the part of Char- 
tiers against the proprietory government. In 1748 (lb. V. 311) 
a footnote observes that some of the Shawnees had been seduced 
by Peter Chartiers, a noted Indian trader, and removed from 
their town to be nearer the French. 

[59] 



Metis of Noble Blood on Both Sides 

WE have seen that while ''not many noble" 
sons of France intermarried with the na- 
tives of the western world, yet there were 
some distinj^iished exceptions. 

An instance of a family of French mixed-bloods 
carrying in its name through several generations the 
''noble particule" appears in that of Charles Michel 
de Langlade, ' ' the Father of Wisconsin, ' ' w^hose early 
career as an officer in the armies of New France awak- 
ens especial interest, since it was by the tactics which 
he planned and almost forced upon his superior offi- 
cer that Washington met the most crushing defeat in 
which he ever had a part. De Langlade's father, 
Augustin, was of the old French family Mouet de 
Moras, and the first to adopt (doubtless, according to 
French custom, from his mother's family) the name 
de Langlade. He was a fur trader at Machilimacinac, 
and after English possession one of the first to settle 
in the valley of the Fox River. Of this Augustin and 
his Ottowa wife Domitilde, widow of the Sieur Daniel 
de Villeneuve, and sister of the Ottawa head chief La 
Fourche (Mis-so-wa-quet), Charles de Langlade was 
the son. Accustomed almost from infancy to Indian 
warfare, he led a band of 650 Indians to reinforce de 
Beaujeu's 1250 regulars at Fort Duquesne. He di- 

[60] 



Metis of Noble Blood on Both Sides 

vined the tactics which alone could prevail over Brad- 
dock 's disciplined army; and after de Beaujen's 
thrice repeated refusal, induced him to surprise Brad- 
dock by an attack on the Monongaliela/ The result 
is history. Only AVashington and his Virginia militia 
saved the rout from becoming a massacre. 

De Langlade's training for such warfare had be- 
gun early. Always more than half Indian in spirit, 
as Tasse says, at the age of five he was taken by his 
Ottawa uncle La Fourche as a sort of mascot to war 
against another tribe allied with the English. The 
Ottawas conquered, and the tribe, believing the child 
to be protected by a powerful manitou, yielded always 
to his influence. He was later sent to Montreal for 
education, but at the age of fifteen we find him pre- 

1 Mr. Joseph Wallace (op. cit.), basing his statement upon an old 
French account ( ' 'Relations Diverses sur la Bataille de Malan- 
gu61e gagne le 9 juillet 1755 par les Frangais sous M. de Beaujeu, 
Commandant du Fort Duquesne, sur les Anglois sous M. Brad- 
dock, general en chef des troupes Anglaises"), says that Brad- 
dock's defeat was due to Daniel Lienard de Beaujeu, Command- 
ant at Fort Duquesne, and makes no mention of de Langlade. 
Under the circumstances this was natural enough, but the above 
facts are too well attested for doubt to be possible. Naturally 
M. de Beaujeu, once having yielded to the persuasions of his 
subordinate, would receive credit for the victory. Other explana- 
tions of Braddock's defeat are not lacking. The Rev. G. P. 
Donehoo (op. cit.) says that it "was due far more to the aliena- 
tion of the Delawares and Shawnees in Ohio, because of the fear- 
ful abuse of the rum traffic, than to any lack of ability on the part 
of Braddock." "The Indians on the Ohio had been driven by 
the nefarious land sales and the traffic in rum away from the 
English and into the arms of the French.'' Unquestionably the 
blunders of the English in their relations with the Indians con- 
tributed remotely to this defeat, but its immediate cause was 
that given in the text, drawn from original records in the Wis- 
consin Historical Society publications and confirmed by Judge 
Campbell ("Wisconsin in Three Centuries"), by Archbishop 
Tasse ("Les Canadiens de I'Ouest," I. 5. 1878), and more rec- 
ently by the late Reuben Gold Thwaites (Colonies). Dr. East- 
man (Quart. Journ. S.A.I., I. 1915) accounts for Braddock's 
defeat by his neglect of and disregard for his Indian scouts, a 
most probable contributory element to the event. 

[61] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

paring for the important part he was later to take in 
the struggle between two great nations. He was a 
cadet of acknowledged bravery and ability, and 
King's interpreter, understanding many Indian dia- 
lects. He had already given proof of military ability 
by various notable exploits, when at the opening of 
the Seven Year's War Vaudreuil put him at the head 
of the Indian forces, with whose aid he conquered the 
Miami allies of the English, and freed the valleys of 
Northern Ohio from English occupancy. He was 
twenty-six years old at the time of Braddock's defeat. 

De Langlade with his Indians was active all 
through the subsequent struggle, until on the Plains 
of Abraham he surpassed himself, after giving counsel 
which, had it been followed, might perhaps have 
changed defeat into victory (Tasse, op. cit. p. 28). 
The war over, he became as loyal to the conquering 
nation as he had been to the French, settling in Green 
Bay as Superintendent of Indians for Great Britain, 
and Captain of militia. 

Here, getting word of the conspiracy of Pontiac 
(who had been one of his young braves on the Monon- 
gahela), he might have frustrated it, had not Captain 
Etherington, "tired," he said, ''of hearing his old 
woman's stories," refused to heed his warning. De 
Langlade, however, succeeded in rescuing Ethering- 
ton and his lieutenant, Leslie, coming with a band of 
Ottawas when they were actually bound to the torture 
stake, and cutting their cords, defied the Indians to 
attack him. It was only owing to his powerful inter- 

[62] 



Metis of Noble Blood on Both Sides 

cession that any English life was saved (Tasse, op. 
cit. p. 52). 

At the outbreak of the Revolution Charles de 
Langlade, then a loyal British officer as he subse- 
quently became a loyal American citizen, offered his 
services to Bourgoyne, but was met with such open 
lack of confidence that his Indians refused to fight. 
He returned to Green Bay and became the leading 
merchant and landowner in the Fox River Valley.'' 
His sons and sons-in-law, whether the children of his 
first, Ottawa, or his later, French wife, fill a large 
place in the history of the Upper Lakes during the 
last half of the 18th century (Thwaites, "Wiscon- 
sin"). Though not, as has often been asserted, the 
first white settler in the state, (not even his father 
was that), Wisconsin delights to honor Charles de 
Langlade as its "father." Absolutely fearless on the 
field of battle, a born strategist, one of the most cour- 
ageous defenders of the French cause in Canada, he 
knew how to accept the inevitable, and devoted the 
last years of a long life to building up the economic 
prosperity of his state. Yet in his old age he loved 
to recall his life of adventure, the ninety -nine battles, 
skirmishes and border forays in which he had taken 
part, and which he wished had been one more to make 

- Langlade, ''one of the most courageous defenders of the French 
cause in Candida" (Tasse in Wis. Hist. Col. VII., p. 124), was 
an admirable illustration of that French type of loyalty to truth 
which consists in acceptance of the accomplished fact, — a type 
of loyalty notably witnessed to by the Huguenots, who became 
"English in England, Germans in the Rhine Provinces, Dutch in 
Holland and Americans in America,'' and of which we shall find 
more than one instance among the metis of the west. 

[63] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

a hundred. He died in 1800, universally mourned 
throughout the Northwest. His integrity was pro- 
verbial. ' ' It would have been easy for him to defraud 
the government," says Archibishop Tasse (he being at 
the head of the militia), but his accounts were ''al- 
ways remarkable for the strictest rectitude." The 
Indians called him A-ke-wan-ge-a-can-so (He who is 
fierce for the land, i. e. the country) . 

Two near relatives of Charles de Langlade were 
in his force in the battle of the Monongahela, and 
afterward distinguished themselves in the defence of 
French interests in America: the French-Menominee 
Souligny, husband of one half-sister (by their Indian 
mother's former marriage), and G-autier de Vierville, 
the son of another. This latter sister, Marie Louise 
de Villeneuve, had married a Frenchman of family, 
Claude Gautier de Vierville. Their son, the younger 
Gautier de Vierville, a heroic youth who later with his 
Indian relatives "fought like a lion" (Tasse) on the 
Plains of Abraham, did valiantly by his young uncle 's 
side on the Monongahela. Like other French mixed- 
bloods of intelligence, at the close of the war he 
''cheerfully rallied under his old enemies the Brit- 
ish," and with his uncle de Langlade was active in 
keeping the northwest Indians faithful to England's 
interests during the Revolutionary war. For his ser- 
vices during this war he was rewarded with a cap- 
tain's commission under Hamilton. On the surrender 
of the latter to Clark, Gautier left the army, and 
eventually, like others of his family, became a loyal 

[64] 



Metis of Noble Blood on Both Sides 

American citizen. He married first a Winnebago girl, 
and later Miss Madeleine Chevallier, a ''woman of 
rare beauty." His "numerous descendants at Green 
Bay and Prairie du Chien" "rank with the best of 
the old families there," says Thwaites. In his ex- 
treme old age he wrote (in pretty bad French) a nar- 
rative of a journey he had earlier made to the upper 
Mississippi. 

Gautier de Vierville's eldest daughter married 
Michel Brisebois, a wealthy trader of Prairie du 
Chien, and in her home, in that village of metis, the 
aged campaigner died. 

The sons of Charles de Langlade by his Indian 
wife Domitilde took an active part on the English side 
in the war of 1812. His grandson, Louis Grignon, held 
a Lieutenant's commission under Col. Dickson in that 
war. Great Britain being then in actual possession 
of Wisconsin, nearly all the metis of that region held 
British commissions during that conflict. Unlike the 
French habitants and voyageurs of Illinois and Ind- 
iana, who had gone over to the patriots during the 
Revolution, they were closely bound by blood and 
social ties to the French subjects of Great Britain in 
Montreal (Campbell, op. cit.), and therefore were in 
favor of Great Britain. We have seen Louis Grignon 
holding a British commission at this time. Another 
grandson of de Langlade, Augustin Grignon, held a 
captain's commission and took part in the capture of 
Fort McKay at Prairie du Chien in 1814. Louis 
Grignon had long had a trading establishment at that 

[65] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

post and was Indian agent of the western district for 
the British Government. His correspondence book, 
which he kept in French, was given by his grandson, 
Charles Grignon of Green Bay, to the Wisconsin 
Historical Society. 

Col. McDowell, the British commander of the 
Fort at Prairie du Chien, wrote to Gen. Drummond 
from Miehilimacinac in 1814 that he had appointed 
Mr. Joseph Rolette, Mr. Anderson and Mr. (Louis) 
Grignon of Green Bay to be Captains of volunteers, 
and that the two former had raised 63 men in two 
days. It was not long after this, however, that Louis 
Grignon wrote to Barthelotte from ''La Bale Verte" 
(May 18, 1815) ''by the Gazette we see that we are 
ceded to the Americans." He evidently became a 
good American, like the rest of his family. In 1821 
the young American civilian who afterward became 
Gen. Ellis, U. S. A., went to Green Bay to be teacher 
of English in the school founded by the five Grignon 
brothers, metis grandsons of Charles de Langlade, who 
saw the importance of the English language for the 
rising generation. The "most princely hospitality" 
of Augustin Grignon, whose permanent home was at 
Grand Kakalin, made a deep impression upon the 
future general officer. 

The innate refinement and charm which such 
mixed-bloods inherited from their French ancestry 
was an important element in the crude civilization of 
the northwest. 

[66] 



Metis op^ Noble Blood on Both Sides 

The traveller Farnham writes ("Western Trav- 
els," 18: 39) of the mixed-blood wife and beautiful 
children of a half-pay officer of French extraction, 
M. Paimbrun, adding that Mme. Paimbrun had 
''shown great kindness to Marcus Whitman." Even 
so late as 1885 the author of ' ' The Wonderland Eoute 
to the Pacific," writing of Miles City, then a town of 
3000 inhabitants, observes that ''the few ladies that 
keep chivalry alive in the small community are mostly 
of the aboriginal stock, ' ' their mothers or grandmoth- 
ers having married Frenchmen. Mrs. Kinzie in her 
fascinating story of the beginnings of Chicago 
("Waubun") tells of Mrs. Mitchell, the "extremely 
pretty and delicate" French-Sioux wife of a Scotch 
physician settled at Michilimackinac, who had been ' ' a 
great belle at Fort Crawford in her youth," and of 
her three daughters, half Scotch and half French- 
Indian, who, "handsome, attractive and charming," 
says their younger contemporary Mrs. Baird of Green 
Bay, had been educated in Europe. 

Full of charm are the "Reminiscences of Life in 
Territorial Wisconsin," by this Mrs. Elizabeth Therese 
Baird, whose maternal grandmother, Misigan (Marie) 
Mascotte, wife of the trader George Schindler, was a 
French-Ottawa, and whose metisse mother Adrienne 
Lesaliere, Mme. Schindler 's daughter by a former 
marriage, opened the first boarding school for girls in 
the Northwest (teaching reading, writing, sewing and 
general housekeeping) ; who herself at the age of four- 
teen was married to a young American lawyer of 

[67] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

Green Bay and lived there till her death in 1890. 
Mrs. Baird tells how on their arrival in Green Bay 
the young couple were met by Mr. Louis Grignon, 
(long before this a loyal American citizen), who 
spoke little English but excellent French, but whose 
manners were delightful; how Mme. Grignon spoke 
neither English nor French, but only Chippewa. She 
dwells on the '^ extreme gentleness and politeness" of 
Mme. Augustin Grignon, whose daughter spoke no 
English when married to an American who spoke no 
French by Justice of the Peace Porlier, who also spoke 
no English. The Grignon house was ''full of hand- 
some daughters,'"' those Misses Grignon of Green Bay 
upon whose charm and good breeding Mrs. Kinzie had 
expatiated. The description of the large circle of 
inter-related Grignons, Porliers, Viands, La Fram- 
boises and Rolettes (Joseph Rolette, a man of note, 
Therese's godfather, of whom we shall see much, had 
married her elder sister), all prosperous, all persons 
of influence in the pleasantly developing settlement, 
all apparently able in case of emergency to fall back 
on one or another Indian tongue when French or 
English failed, gives a charming glimpse into a prim- 
itive society characterized by industry, simplicity and 
refinement. Not a few, both men and women, had 
been educated in Europe, or at least in Montreal ; yet 
the little fourteen year old bride would certainly 
have occasion to feel no sense of inferiority when, 
notwithstanding her mother's boarding school and 
the Boys ' Academy of her grandfather Schindler, hus- 

[68] 



Metis of Noble Blood on Both Sides 

band of the Ottawa grandmother, her lawyer husband 
was fain to induct her into the intricacies of written 
and printed English. 

It is doubtless due to the inherent grace and 
charm of French mixed-blood women that marriages 
between them and whites of good standing are hardly 
yet a thing of the past. The first cousin of former 
Vice-president Fairbanks married a metisse of the 
Chippewa tribe and we shall shortly peep in at the 
wedding of a brother of a future President of the 
United States and a lovely and highly cultured French 
mixed-blood girl. 

A noted instance of a family of noble French 
blood not only marrying into an Indian tribe, but 
entirely identifying itself with it, greatly to the ad- 
vantage of the civilization of the tribe, is that of Lu- 
cien Fontanelle. Chittenden in his ' ' Fur Trade, ' ' de- 
scribes him as "one of the best examples of Rocky 
Mountain 'partisan' leaders of brigades of itinerant 
hunters and trappers, believed to have been of royal 
lineage." More probably his mother was the daugh- 
ter of the Marquis de Fontanelle whose estates were 
near Marseilles. His parents emigrated to Louisiana 
in the end of the eighteenth century, and not long 
afterward lost their lives in a flood and hurricane, 
while their son and daughter were with relatives in 
New Orleans. In his sixteenth year Louis ran away 
to seek his fortune, reached Nebraska, and was em- 
ployed by the American Fur Company, About 1824 
he took to wife the daughter of On-pa-ton-ga (Big 

[69] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

Elk), Chief of the Omaha tribe (who adopted Joseph 
La Flesche). From this union five children were 
born. The son Logan was educated in St. Louis, and 
on the death of On-pa-ton-ga in 1846 became the head 
chief of the Omahas.'' 

Logan Fontanelle made the most of his education 
and position for the betterment of his tribe, zealously 
safe-guarding their rights in treaties with the Govern- 
ment, and having many dealings with the early white 
settlers, who gave his name to the town of Fontanelle, 
Neb. Logan's Creek is also called after him. He was 
killed by the Sioux in June, 1855, while on a hunting 
expedition. His youngest brother, Henry, was ap- 
pointed United States Interpreter, and was also Gov- 
ernment Farmer on the Reservation, instructing the 
Indian agent as to the best methods of dealing with 
tlie Indians and inducing them to work. He died in 
1899. All the four brothers and the sister, Su>san 
Fontanelle, wlio married the half-blood Louis Neals, 
were educated, and all used their influence toward 
civilizing and advancing the status of the Omahas. 
A number of their descendants are now living in 
Nebraska. 



3 So the Rev. N. A. Sliine, wlio is a missionary among these iit'Oi>U'. 
The La Flesche family dispute this assertion, on the ground that 
their father, Josej)!! La Flesche (Estimaza, Iron Eye), was 
adopted by Big Elk. The cases of adopted sons being chosen 
to be chief are many, and it is not necessary to decide the 
question here. The La Flesches have distinguished themselves 
in many lines of noble service. The Fontanelles have remained 
with the tribe and are evidently doing good work for their people. 

[70] 




ARTHUR C. PARKER 
State Archeologist of New York, President 
of the Society of American Indians, Editor 
of the American Indian Magazine, etc. 

See p. 179 



VI 

French-Indians as Mediators 

THE Cadotte family is another instance of metis 
in whose veins runs noble blood both Indian 
and French. Sons of the last French Com- 
mandant at Fort Ste. Marie du Sault, Jean Baptiste 
Cadotte and his wife Anastatic, daughter of Keech-ki- 
mun, Chief of the Objibways, Jean Baptiste and 
Michel Cadotte were educated at Montreal, and mar- 
ried into their mother's tribe. The elder, Jean Bap- 
tiste, was the peacemaker between the Objibways 
(Chippewas) and the British and American author- 
ities. "^ 

He was explorer as well, the first to open to trade 
and settlement an important domain. Having inher- 
ited 40,000 francs from his father, the Commandant, 
he had at once gone into the fur trade, but his gen- 
erosity to his Indian relatives soon impoverished him. 
The leading fur trader of that day, Alexander Henry, 
a friend and partner of Cadotte 's father, lent him a 
large sum of money — a loan which in after years he 
repaid — and equipping himself anew he started in 
1792 for the then almost unknown headwaters of the 
Mississippi, accompanied by his brother Michel and a 
party of sixty trappers, coureurs and Indians. This 
was the country of the Dakotas (Sioux), and many 

^ Supra, p. 42. 

[71] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

were the disagreements between this tribe and the Ob- 
jib ways, many the dangerous moments averted by the 
courage and wisdom of the two brothers. The imme- 
diate result was the establishment of important posts 
in the extreme north of what are now Wisconsin and 
Minnesota, till then entirely undeveloped territory. 
It was here that the difficulty between the Objibways 
and the two governments occurred, and was appeased 
by Cadotte's tact, reinforced by the Indians' confi- 
dence in him. In 1792 Cadotte was in charge of the 
Fond du Lac post of the Northwest Fur Company. 

It is from his grandson, Mr. William Whipple 
Warren, that we learn that during the war of 1812 
Cadotte's two sons, also named respectively Jean 
Baptiste and Michel, were either captured or enticed 
into the British lines, and were given the option of 
submitting to imprisonment or acting as interpreters 
for Great Britain. They chose the latter, were active 
in all the principal battles on Canadian soil, and se- 
verely wounded. The elder, Jean Baptiste, third of the 
name, held a commission under Col. Dickson, but after 
peace both brothers resumed their American alle- 
giance. Their two sisters, finely educated women, mar- 
ried Lyman and Truman Warren of Massachusetts, 
descendants of the Mayflower pilgrim Richard War- 
ren, and relatives of Joseph Warren who fell at Bun- 
ker Hill. 

The Cadotte family is still an honorable one in 
the region. The younger son of the Commandant, 
Michel Cadotte, wliom the Indians called Ke-ehe-mi- 

[72] 



French Indians as Mediators 

shane, ''great Michel," a man of liberal education, 
sent his two sons to college in Montreal. Later in life 
he retired to his farm, on Chequamagon Bay, where 
years before he had built up a large trade, which after- 
ward passed to his sons-in-law, the two Warren broth- 
ers. His wife, who, like his mother, was the daughter 
of a Chippewa chief, was living in 1850 at the age of 
ninety. She used to tell her grandsons how in the 
days when her husband and his brother were estab- 
lishing trading posts in the north, the women and 
children were left at Fond du Lac, as the farther re- 
gions were dangerous. Her son Michel, who at the 
age of sixty was living with his mother at La Pointe 
(Chequamagon) could tell of many hairbreadth es- 
capes of his own. He was the best Objibway inter- 
preter in the Northwest. 

Mr. William Whipple Warren, son of Mary Ca- 
dotte, in protest against Judge Campbell's statement 
that most of the Objibways supported the British 
cause, says that in 1812-15 only one or two of the 
9,000 on Lake Superior and the Mississippi River 
joined the British, under the urgency of Colonel 
Dickson, who had traded among them and married an 
Indian woman. The old chief Keesh-ke-mun, grand- 
father of the two young Cadottes, "nobly refused to 
join them," says his great-grandson. 

Upon the occupation of the Ohio valley at the 
close of the Revolutionary War the metis among the 
Miami and Wabash Indians were found to be useful 
to the government as interpreters and go-betweens, 

[ 73 ] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 



not only because they were bilin^al, or indeed multi- 
lingual, but chiefly because, as was always the case, 
they were trusted by both parties. Confidence on the 
part of the Indians was especially important in the 
cases of removals from lands held by them not only 
by immemorial occupation, but also by treaty — re- 
movals which are among the most flagrant cases of 
injustice ever perpetrated by a powerful nation upon 
a weaker people. Notable among mediators in such 
cases was Baptiste Peoria, son of a French Canadian 
trader and the daughter of a sub-chief of the Peoria 
tribe. Speaking well both French and English and 
greatly beloved by the Indians of the Middle West, 
Peoria's integrity commended him to the United 
States Government, which he served in the Indian 
department nearly thirty years. He represented his 
tribe at the treaty of Edwardsville in 1818, and be- 
tween 1821 and 1838 assisted in the peaceable remov- 
al of the Potawatomies, Shawnees, Delawares, Miamis, 
and Kickapoos to Kansas, where a principal city bears 
his name, Paoli, the Indian pronunciation of Peoria 
being Paola. Later he collected the fragments of sev- 
eral Illinois tribes scattered in that state, consolidated 
them as the "Confederated Tribes," became their 
chief, and led them peacefully to their newly assigned 
Reservation in the Indian Territory. There, in 1873, 
he died. His widow, a Brothertown Indian'' who had 

2 A mixed group composed of remnants of various Algonquian tribes 
of New York and New England, who, in the later 18th century, 
under the leadership of the well known Indian minister Samson 
Cecum, settled in Oneida County, N. Y., called their settlement 

[74] 



French Indians as Mediators 

previously been the wife of the well known metis, 
Christmas Dagney/ long survived him in ''her elegant 
homestead at Paoli." 

The name of Le Roy or Roy has an honorable 
record among mediators. About 1703 Pierre Roy of 
Quebec married the Miami girl Madeleine Quaban- 
quin-quois. For several generations there were sons 
and daughters of this family who married into the 
best families of New France, and others who married 
into Indian tribes, their descendants being found in 
our Lake Superior region and elswhere in the North- 
west, sometimes appearing among the Winnebagoes 
as Le Roy. In 1871 Peter Roy, a metis, was sent by 
the Government from Lake Superior to St. Paul as 
special commissioner to investigate the fraudulent use 
of Chippewa scrip. It is a long story, dating from 
the treaty of 1854, by which each Chippew^a (Ob jib- 
way) mixed-blood over twenty-one became entitled to 
80 acres of land, secured to him by patent in the 
usual form. This article was incorporated in the 
treaty at the request of the most intelligent metis, 
who hoped that all of their tribe would thus be in- 
duced to abandon the roving life and settle upon their 
land as farmers. Scrip for these lots of eighty acres 
each was issued to the agent to be claimed by the 
metis, and having by processes only too well under- 



Brothertown (now Brotherton) and adopted the English lan- 
guage. In 1833, with the Oneidas and Stockbridges, they 
moved to Wisconsin, and soon after abandoned their tribal rela- 
tions and became citizens. (H. A. I., I, 166). 
Infra, p. 155. 



[75] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

stood in those days fallen into other than the proper 
hands, the government investigation was finally or- 
dered which Peter Roy successfully carried through, 
to the discomfiture of ''some parties who had found 
it profitable to get this scrip and deal in it." (Ind. 

Aff.). 

The names of metis continually occur in the 
American State Papers in connection with Indian 
treaties. In negotiating such treaties they were not 
only especially useful but indispensable, since only by 
their persuasions could the Indians be induced to 
give up their lands. In 1785 there were a number of 
metis among the Cassetas, Cowetas, Cherokees and 
Creeks, when commissioners from those tribes (then 
in Georgia and Carolina) met the American Commis- 
sioners and were assured by the latter that the Amer- 
icans ''want none of your lands nor anything that 
belongs to you" (America State Papers, Class 2, In- 
dian Affairs, Vol. I, p. 41). One is amazed to find 
these tribes, notwithstanding what must have been a 
painful disillusionment, still making treaties with the 
American Government some fifty years later, though 
apparently taking the precaution of selecting their 
own (metis) interpreter, James Douzezeau, "by the 
request of the lower Creeks, the two chiefs, the Hal- 
lowing King of the Cowetas and the Fat King of the 
Cussetas, " and others. This Douzezeau (Du Rouz- 
eaux, Dureziaux, and various other orthographies) 
appears in the State Papers of the first half of the 

[76] 



French Indians as Mediators 

nineteenth century as government interpreter in the 
making of treaties with the Indians of the South. 

It is interesting but not surprising that French 
Indians, inheriting from centuries of European ances- 
try a genius for chivalry, should have thrown in their 
lot with the race which has been oppressed by the 
breaking of unnumbered treaties, rather than with 
that of the oppressors. These treaties, made in all 
good faith b}^ the less intelligent, or more correctly 
the less educated, parties, were so seldom broken by 
them* that as one looks through the volumes of Ameri- 
can State Papers, the reading of countless instances 
of unfaith on the other part makes the blood tingle 
with shame. That was not the first of the list which in 
1789 confirmed to the Six Nations in consideration of 
$8,000 all the land west and north of Oswego Creek 
in New York State 'Ho remain as a division between 
the lands of the Six Nations and the territory of the 
United States forever." Made without prevision of 
the future, no doubt, but whose fault was that? No 
wonder that only three years later (1792) Cornplanter 



There appears to be no documentary evidence that Indians ever 
broke a treaty, though once broken by the whites their vengeance 
was often fearful. One would be glad to believe that it was in 
sheer shame that treaty-making with Indians was abolished by 
law in 1871 and "agreements" substituted, if so competent a 
witness as ex-Commissioner Leupp were not here to testify that 
the only difference has been that since the substitution Con- 
gress has felt free to "take all sorts of liberties" with the 
latter. A flagrant case of ill faith did indeed lead the Indian 
Rights Association to bring a suit; but this, after being carried 
all the way to the Supreme Court, only resulted m a decision of 
that august tribunal giving the Government an absolutely free 
hand in disposing of the property of Indians. Since when Con- 
gress has acted as if all Indian property belonged unreservedly 
to it. ("In Red Man's Land", p. 42). 

[77] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

was moved to utter the protest which in the light of 
all that has since occurred overwhelms the white 
American with shame: ''Father Washington, we 
know that you are very strong and we have heard 
that you are wise, and we wait to hear that you are 
just." It was again from inability to foresee the fu- 
ture that our Government secured lands east of the 
Mississippi to the Choctaws and Cherokees "as long 
as water runs and grass grows," only in 1870 to re- 
move them to the Indian Territory. For nearly a 
century the Government went on lightly making and 
breaking treaties, from sheer incapacity to anticipate 
the growth of population ; and in the face of remon- 
strances of Indian agents and Commissioners it has 
continued the process after that excuse has ceased to 
serve. It appears only to have learned how to be 
"just" now that there are no more lands of which to 
defraud its " wards. "^ 



Alas, not even yet I The "still pending" claims of the Pembina 
Chippewas (p. 118 infra), the long drawn out Senatorial contro- 
versy over the payment to the ' lloyal Creeks" who were freely 
giving their lives for the Union (supra p. 24), for the cattle taken 
from them by Government to feed its army during the Civil War, 
all spread upon our Congressional records, are a disgraceful monu- 
ment to the bad faith of the American people ; for in a govern- 
ment of a people by the people not one citizen is without 
responsibility for its misdeeds. 

[78] 



VII 
Metis Loyalty 

IN view of facts like those mentioned in the pre- 
vious chapter one is ashamed to use the words 
''Indian treachery," yet the idea has become 
almost an axiom of American thought. How much de- 
pends upon the point of view ! The conspiracy of 
Pontiac, for example/ was an unselfish, independent 
attempt to be loyal to the French, who had always 
been the friends of the Indians, and under whose sub- 
jugation by the hated English the high minded In- 
dian chief found it as impossible to sit down tamely 
as the English of today under the violation of Bel- 
gium's territory. 

From these same motives, a generation later, the 
Potawatomies, ''tall, fierce and haughty" from the 
English point of view, who, said the Jesuits in 1640, 
"of all the peoples are the most docile toward the 
French," whose early friendship with the French re- 
mained unbroken through all vicissitudes, but who 
(like the French, with whom they largely inter-mar- 
ried), were capable of accepting the accomplished 



1 H. A. I., art. "Pontiac" gives this chieftain Indian parents, (though 
their ancestors might have been of mixed blood). John Rey- 
nolds ("Pioneer History of Ind.", 1852), who, however, is not 
always accurate, says he had French blood. In any case he 
hated England, and "declared before the Great Spirit, the 
Master of life, eternal hostility to the English", as Hannibal to 
Rome, says Reynolds. "His soul, like that of Patrick Henry, 
was fired with pure patriotism.'' 



[79] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

fact of English domination, perpetrated, out of pure 
loyalty to the English, then at war with United States, 
that massacre at Fort Dearborn which is the first 
event in the history of Chicago. Yet here again, ac- 
cepting the accomplished fact, the Potawatomies 
ceded all that region to the United States, and for 
twenty years more dwelt peaceably among the white 
people of Illinois, until they were peaceably removed 
to a western reservation. 

Loyalty may thus be the inheritance of the metis 
alike from his French and his Indian ancestors. Not- 
withstanding the fact that even the well born and 
well educated among them appear to prefer to be 
reckoned as Indians and to cast in their lot with In- 
dians (and this, generations before such a choice in- 
volved a share in reservation lands, ^) their story from 
the earliest days shows a singular loyalty toward the 
whites. 

In the unsettled years of the latter part of the 
18th century, the Kaskaskia tribe in Illinois had a 



2 The number and the quality of men and women having some French 
blood who in times past and to the present day have elected to 
identify themselves with their Indian relatives gives not a little 
surprise to the student who does not appreciate the Indian 
character. In fact the attraction exerted by Indians over 
whites of any race is a matter of history. School text books 
tell of white captives who when rescued managed to find their 
way back to their captors. Dr. Donehoo (op. cit.) tells of the 
missionary Pont who, having been sent to Carlisle in 1762 as 
escort to a large body of Indians and their white captives, had 
from the very outset trouble in keeping the captives from run- 
ning away and returning to their Indian homes. These captives 
were from the Ohio region and therefore were presumably French. 
And again two years later, when Col. Bouquet came to Carlisle 
bringing home the white captives of the Tuscaroras, they "had 
to be bound to keep them from returning to their Indian homes 
in the villages of the Red Men." 



[80] 



Metis Loyalty 

metis chief named Ducoigii, ' ' a cunning half-blood of 
considerable talents" (Reynolds, op. cit.), who was 
noted for his allegiance to the American government, 
and whose boast it was that neither he nor his nation 
had ever shed a drop of white blood. His well-proved 
friendship for the United States gained him the 
hatred of all the other chiefs, "and ought to be an 
inducement with us to provide for his happiness as 
well as his safety," wrote General Harrison, who had 
many dealings with him, to the Secretary of War. 
Ducoign signed the treaty of Vincennes ; his name is 
preserved in the town of Ducoign, Perry Co., 111.^ 

It was before Clark's expedition to the Iflinois 
country that the three hundred metis who were the 
only male inhabitants of Mailletstown, learning from 
their founder, Paulette Maillet, of the defeat and cap- 
ture by the British of "Mr. Tom" Brady of Kaskas- 
kia, at La Salle's old fort St. Joseph on Lake Michi- 
gan, uprose as one man, marched swiftly and secretly 
across the prairie, captured the fort, though defended 
by British regulars and cannon, took all the stores, 
and brought them with the wounded of Brady 's party 
to Cahokia; thus showing, two years before Father 
Gibault and Francis Vigo, an instinctive conviction 
of the righteousness of the American cause. 

Sadly was their loyalty rewarded! At that 
time Mailletstown, a metis village on the present site 



3 Senator Clapp is my authority for saying that towns with French 
names are "nearly all named after Indians", that is, after 
French mixed-bloods. 



[81] 



Our Debt to the Eed Man 

of Peoria, 111., was the home of '*a quiet, peaceable 
people, with no schools and few who could read and 
write, but in manners, conversation and refinement 
comparing well with educated folk," (N. Matson, 
''French and Indians of the Illinois River"). ''Only 
the merchants and priests could read, a gay, happy, 
sociable people, living in harmony with the Indians, 
having no laws and paying taxes to no power." 
Thirty-four years later, in 1812, it was still a village 
of French mixed-bloods, gay, social and ignorant, liv- 
ing at peace with all the world, far from any Ameri- 
can settlement, and not so much as knowing that there 
was war between the United States and Great Britain. 
Suddenly, one Sunday morning, as they were all in 
church, they were attacked by an armed force of Illi- 
nois militia with cannon; their town — church, mill 
and every house — set on fire, their goods plundered, 
the women insulted, the men all taken prisoners and 
marched away, leaving women and children helpless 
and destitute. It had been done at the order of Gov- 
ernor Ninian Edwards, who, deceived by false reports, 
and perhaps with the recent event at Fort Dearborn 
in mind, assuming that these peaceable people, being 
both French and Indian, must be traitors to the 
United States, had thus set an example to the invaders 
of Belgium. One man alone escaped, Antoine La Bell. 
He carried the news to neighboring Indians, who has- 
tened to the rescue of the naked and starving women 
and children, and carried them in bark canoes to Ca- 
hokia. With what must have seemed to him bitter 

[82] 



Metis Loyalty 

irony Captain Maillet had before this been rewarded 
by Congress for loyalty. 

La Bell took refuge in Prairie du Chien and later 
joined the Sionx. In 1882 his descendant, Charles 
La Bell, was sent to Washington to represent his peo- 
ple in a suit for the recovery of their land — then 
largely covered by the city of Peoria. Naturally his 
mission failed, and it was not until after long litiga- 
tion that eighteen claimants, representing the wid- 
owed and orphaned survivors of the massacre, re- 
ceived from the subsequent occupants of the land a 
considerable sum as damages. At the present day the 
La Bells are prosperous and influential among the 
metis Sioux of South Dakota. 

In Custer's party in the tragic event on the Little 
Big Horn were a number of Crow Indians, — Crows, 
whom Catlin has described as ''one of the most loyal, 
honest and highminded races on earth," and who in 
this conflict gave full proof of these qualities. It was, 
however, a French-Sioux, Mich Bouya, who on this 
occasion gave the supreme illustration of loyalty to 
this country. He had been captured in childhood by 
the Crows and brought up among them, marrying the 
daughter of a Frenchman who had become a member 
of the Crow tribe. Mich Bouya was leader of the 
Indians in the action on the Little Big Horn, and had 
the gallant Custer heeded his warning the awful mas- 
sacre of that day might not have occurred. Bouya 
had ascertained that there Avere more Sioux and 

[83] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

Cheyennes in the valley than Custer supposed. He 
went with his head men to the Council and warned 
the officers that it would be death to open the attack 
before Gen. Reno could be brought up. The answer 
was that if the Crows were afraid they might stay in 
camp. ''The Crows are not afraid to die," was Bou- 
ya's answer, and perfectly clear-sighted as to the re- 
sult he led his braves to the attack. The Sioux, know- 
ing Bouya to be of their own tribe, made every effort 
to take him alive. He died by torture at their hands, 
and his grave is near the top of the hill where Custer 
fell.' 

The name of the town of Keokuk, Iowa, preserves 
the memory of a metis chief who was also a friend of 
the whites, not only at personal risk but at the peril 
of his ambitions, for Keokuk, "Watchful Fox," the 
son of a Fox father and a metisse mother"^ was not 
born of a ruling family. Through his unrivalled ora- 
tory and ability in negotiation he rose to be head 
chief of the Sa^ik and Fox nation. Always a loyal 
friend of the Americans he played into their hands 
during the Black Hawk War. His greatest oratorical 
achievement was a debate with representatives of the 
Sionx and other tribes, in which he established the 
claim of the Sauks and Foxes to the territory of ' ' The 
Beautiful Land, ' ' which we know by its Indian name, 

* His daughter, from whom these facts were indirectly obtained, is 
still living, the wife of a white man, and his grand daughter, 
reckoned as an Indian, was recently graduated from Carlisle. 

^ So H. A. I. "The Ohio Archeological and Historical Quarterly", 
1900-1901, says that his father was half French and his mother 
a full blood Sauk. 

[84] 



Metis Loyalty 

Iowa. He later peacefully led his tribe from Iowa to 
Kansas Territory and there died in 1848. In 1883 his 
remains were brought to Keokuk and buried in the 
public park, a fine monument being erected over them 
by citizens of the town. Catlin, who has much to say 
about him, painted his portrait. McKinney and Hail 
("Indian Tribes" 2; 20) speak of him as "in all 
respects a magnificent savage .... an able 
negotiator .... dignified and graceful." A 
bronze bust of Keokuk stands in the Capitol at Wash- 
ington, sharing with Sequoyah, the father of Cherokee 
literacy, the only honor thus paid to an original 
American. 

His son, Chief Moses Keokuk, also a metis, con- 
tinued the tradition of friendship with the United 
States. He had, says Mr. Charles Dagenett who knew 
him as an old man, much of his father's ability, was 
perhaps even his intellectual superior, and of higher 
ethics. Moses Keokuk died at the Sauk and Fox 
agency in Oklahoma in 1903, his death being regarded 
as a tribal calamity. The Report of the Indian Com- 
missioner to the Secretary of War in 1902 speaks of 
him as "a remarkable Indian," "84 years old, in- 
telligent, progressive, of the very highest character, 
who with his father have been chief counsellors of the 
Sac and Fox Indians for 75 years." Moses Keokuk 
"has done every thing to induce his people to use to 
good purpose the money they receive for the sale of 
lands, has taught them to improve their farm houses, 
stock .... every council meeting is as it were a school 

[85] 



Ouii Deut to the Red Man 

of instruction." Moses Keokuk became very religious 
in liis later years, was l)ai)tize(l in tlie Baptist Clmrcli, 
though always a close friend of the Roman Catholic 
missionary. He ''never ceased to love the old-time life 
and its associations", says Mr. Dagoiett. 

Though Keokuk's state, Towa, stands alone among 
states of the Mississi])pi basin in having no French 
names in its early animls, yet it still delights to honor 
tin; memory of its greatest benefactor, Keokuk's 
friend, the French Potawatomie Antoine Le Claire. 
Fort Armstrong, built in ISUJ on Rock Island, was the 
only American settlement in the state when in 1818 
Antoine Le Claire, then a youth of twenty, later ''the 
first citizen of Daven])ort," came as Government in- 
terpreter. He was the son of a Canadian French 
trader of Micliilimackinac who had married the grand- 
daughter of a Potawatomie chief. The elder Le 
Claire had traded at Fort Dearborn, where in 1812 
he espoused the American cause, though surrounded 
by hostile tribes. TTappening to be in ]\Jailletstown 
on business when Governor Edwards ordered the 
destruction of that village, he was taken prisoner with 
the other men. While he was still in prison, his son 
Antoine, whose linguistic abilities were already, at 
the age of fourteen, remarkable — he speaking French 
and some fourteen Indian languages — was taken into 
the governnient sci'vice and sent to school to learn 
English. From 1816 to 1842 he was government in- 
terpreter, serving at many treaties by which vast ter- 
ritories were conveyed by the Indians to the whites. 

[H'i] 



Metis Loyalty 

The most important of these was the Black Hawk pur- 
chase of 1832, when, at the price of $20,000 annually 
paid for thirty years, the extinguishment of the debts 
of the tribe, and the support of a gunsmith and a 
blackmith among them, the United States acquired 
from the Sauks and Foxes 6,000,000 acres west of the 
Mississippi. During this negotiation Le Claire's warm 
friend Keokuk, the metis chief of the Sauks and 
Foxes, had stipulated that out of the tract a square 
mile (on which Davenport, Iowa, now stands) should 
be given to Mrs. Le Claire, who was the granddaugh- 
ter of the Sauk Chief Acoqua, the Kettle, her father 
being a French Canadian. Another square mile at 
the head of the rapids, now the town of Le Claire, was 
given Mr. Le Claire. By the treaty of Prairie du 
Chien, when the Potawatomies stipulated that Le 
Claire should receive two sections, lands now in 
Molines, 111., and Keokuk, Iowa, became his, the last 
by gift of his friend. Chief Keokuk. 

Hardly was the Black Hawk Purchase concluded 
when settlers rushed in. Two contending claims for 
a tract of land in the lower part of what is now Daven- 
port being put in by respectable parties, Le Claire 
settled the contest by buying both claims, giving the 
claimants $150 each for a quarter section. In 1835 
the town of Davenport was platted by a committee 
of seven men, Le Claire being one. It adjoined his 
square mile, which he subsequently added to the city 
in ''additions." Shares in the new town were sold 
at $250 each. The first religious services (Roman 

[87] 



Odr Debt to the Red Man 

Catholic) were held in Le Claire's house, a priest com- 
ing from Galena ; but before long the need of a church 
became imperative. The first brick building in Daven 
port, named St. Anthony's Church, from its largest 
donor, was dedicated in 1838. For this church Le 
Claire gave a whole square in the very centre of the 
town, besides meeting a large share of the expense 
of bmldnig. In this church and the school nouse at- 
tached to It were held the first public meetings of the 

the httle church, which still stands in the heart of 
the city on property immensely valuable. The same 
spring 1838), "that well known gentleman, Mons Le 
Claire, laid out his First Addition. As the locality 
was desirable and the title perfect the lots were soon 
sold, and on this Addition were erected several busi- 
ness blocks, in which, among many other newly or- 
ganized companies, the Roek River Railroad and the 
Mississippi Steam Navigation Company had offices 

the It v'T ""V ^' ^^^''' '"'-^ ""t ^"'l '^dded to 
the city his Second Addition. As the town grew he 

niade munificent gifts to all the churches of whatever 

denomination be being a Roman Catholic ; and onThe 

hill m his Eighth Addition stands St. Margaret's 

£tt?' Len fr''*"^'^*^^ °' ^--l-' "the 
CatioMe n r" ""^ '"""^^^ ^""' * ^^^o^d Roman 
presen e'.?^^^^^^ '' ""'' """ ^'^P-- -d had 

presented to the Congregationalists a lot for a church 
with similar gifts to other denominations. 
[88] 



Metis Loyalty 

From the earliest days Le Claire was closely asso- 
ciated in all matters connected with the weal of the 
place with Colonel Davenport, for whom the town was 
named. When in 1838 Davenport was in a bitter 
fight with Rockingham for the county seat, one 
promise made by the Colonel was that a court house 
"as good as the one in Stephenson" (now Rock 
Island) should be given the county. On the sub- 
scription list circulated for this purpose appears the 
name of Le Claire for by far the highest subscrip- 
tion — $3,000, the next highest being for $1,200, and 
so on down to $5.00. When the contractor felt a doubt 
as to the responsibility of the list, Le Claire told him 
to go ahead. That appears to have been sufficient, 
but the time came when there was no money for the 
contractor, who promptly sued Mr. Le Claire. The lat- 
ter had no money ; he went to St. Louis and appealed 
for help to his friend, Chouteau, the wealthy Frenc)i 
fur trader, offering as security a mortgage on his 
Davenport lands. Chouteau bade him go to the strong 
box and help himself, refusing any mortgage. Thus 
the court house w^as built. The incident shows the 
character of the man, the way business was done 
among the French, and the debt that Davenport owes 
to the French mixed-blood who established the first 
commercial ferry, served as the first postmaster (for 
some time carrying the entire mail across the river 
in his pocket), was the first justice of the peace, who 
built business blocks, carried on stores and machine 
shops, dispersed a mob and saved a banker's life by 

[89] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

promising to stand good for the bank's issue; a man 
who gave his physician a handful of gold when he 
recovered from illness and later a half dozen blocks 
of ground in the heart of the present Davenport. For 
many years Le Claire was Justice of the Peace for all 
matters between whites and Indians over all the terri- 
tory bought of the Sauks and Foxes, from Dubuque 
to Burlington. 

In 1840 Le Claire, who had already built the 
first tavern in Davenport, planned and erected a 
hotel which was ' ' the finest on the upper Mississippi, ' ' 
"and thus," says the local historian, ''did more to 
build up the place than anything else of the day." 
(''Davenport Past and Present," Frank B. Walker, 
1858). It cost $35,000 and was long a summer resort 
for people of St. Louis and the South. One of its 
early guests was the Prince de Joinville, who stopped 
there with his suite in 1840. 

Le Claire was very generous, and his gifts, not 
only to individuals but to the towns on his lands, were 
so large that he left but a moderate fortune, which 
after his wife's death was distributed among fifty- 
seven heirs, Mr. and Mrs. Le Claire leaving no 
children. 

"Antoine Le Claire," writes a citizen of Daven- 
port, "became rich because he had so much that he 
could not give it away fast enough to impoverish him- 
self. He realized but little from his mile-square at 
the head of the rapids. He had a friend who had 
been sheriff for some time, and who was thrown out 

[90] 



Metis Loyalty 

by the whirligig of politics. To this friend, Adrien 
Davenport, he made the proposition to go to this small 
settlement, lay out a town (Le Claire), sell the lots 
and send him some of the money. His Keokuk mile 
square, or whatever it was, went the same way. He 
practically gave it to his French friends who needed 
it more than he did." 

During the early years Le Claire lived in a story- 
and-a-half house on the "house site" stipulated by 
Keokuk when he reserved the tract for Mrs. Le Claire. 
When the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad was to 
be extended across the town Le Claire took $25,000 
worth of the stock and gave up his homestead, as the 
company wanted it for a depot. He subsequently 
built a "palatial brick mansion on the bluff," where 
he exercised a generous hospitality. The first locomo- 
tive to enter Iowa was named for him. 

Le Claire was a genial, vivacious man, fond of 
society, with conversational abilities of a high order. 
The first ball ever given in Davenport was given in his 
house in 1835. Part of the time he played the fiddle 
for the dancing, but he was the lightest dancer on 
the floor. The literature of this country owes him 
thanks for having gathered from the lips of Black 
Hawk all those traditions of the Sauks and Foxes in 
which that intelligent chief was deeply versed. The 
work was copyrighted and published in 1834. 

Illustrations of Le Claire's generosity are num- 
berless. In the first train to cross the first bridge over 

[91] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

the Mississippi (April 21, 1856), came a considerable 
French contingent. Le Claire took them under his 
wing and established them in one of his ' ' additions. ' ' 
Almost till his death, which occurred in 1861, he was 
known as 'Hhe moneyed man of the town," celebrated 
as ''the original proprietor of Davenport." In 1858, 
when the Pioneer Settlers' Association was organized, 
Le Claire presiding, a cane of native hickory with a 
gold band bearing his name was presented to him, 
to be handed down to succeeding presidents. The 
eighth toast on this occasion was to ''Antoine 
Le Claire, first in settlement, first in efforts to make 
our city peerless among rivals, first in the esteem of 
his fellow citizens, first President of this Society ; may 
his shadow never be less" (from being very slight lie 
had grown exceedingly stout). 

Some of Le Claire's relatives still live in Daven- 
port. A private letter says that Mr. Joe Le Claire 
(also a mixed-blood) has been a useful citizen of 
Davenport, has held a number of county and city 
offices, and is greatly appreciated by a large circle of 
the older inhabitants. 

Though Le Claire left no direct descendants his 
name is perpetuated by some who perhaps, hardly 
know why they are proud of it. We find at least 
two who bore it in the settlement of the far west, 
though the relationship has not been traced. There 
was an Antoine Le Claire in Carlisle School a few 
years ago, and a recent issue of the Carlisle Arrow 

[92] 



Metis Loyalty 

announces his marriage to another student of the 
school. This Le Claire is in the Government employ 
at Fort Hall Agency, "educated, sober, progressive, 
and a first class man." 



03 



VIII 
The Gift of Tongues 

AS the French have never been noted for apti- 
tude in languages, it is doubtless from their 
Indian ancestry that the metis inherited that 
gift of tongues which in their capacity of interpreters 
and go-betweens perhaps enabled them to give their 
largest service to this country throughout its early 
history. 

Though not all metis interpreters have conferred 
such large benefits upon this country as Antoine Le 
Claire and other negotiators of treaties who have been 
here mentioned, it is very certain that few of the 
treaties by which the United States Government has 
acquired clear titles to land ever would or could have 
been made but for the assistance of French mixed- 
bloods. Archbishop Tasse gives the names of sixty- 
four treaties which were negotiated by metis, and 
these are by no means all. Their names are affixed 
to documents which by peaceable purchase give mil- 
lions upon millions of acres to the United States, 
acres which without their aid could only have been 
acquired at the cost of many lives. 

The Laroque name, with such variants as La 
Roche, Le Rocque, etc., is famous among metis inter- 
preters. Joseph Rocque interpreted between the Gov- 
ernment and the Sioux in 1786. Two interpreters 

[94] 



The Gift of Tongues 

named Jean Baptiste Larocque, father and son, were 
with the younger Alexander Henry from 1799 to 
1814. 

Not only in the negotiation of treaties but, and 
with perhaps still more important results impossible 
now to trace with definiteness, in the every day inter- 
course between the whites and the Indians who for 
generations were their near neighbors, and upon 
whose kindly feeling the very existence and growth 
of white settlements depended, have the services of 
metis interpreters, and their skill in languages, been 
beyond all reckoning. 

Margaret Montour, granddaughter of a French 
nobleman who was captured by the Iroquois in 1665 
and married a woman of the Oneida tribe, an edu- 
cated woman of remarkable vigor and energy, was 
"a marvel of linguistic accomplishments." She was 
official interpreter to the Colonial government, first 
appearing in that capacity at Albany in 1711, between 
delegates of the Five Nations and Governor Hunter. 
She acted in the same capacity at a conference be- 
tween delegates of the (then) Six Nations and Lieu- 
tenant-Governor Gordon^ and on various other occa- 
sions. 

The Montour family, by whom, as Justin Winsor 



1 Mr. J. N. B. Hewitt in his article "Montour" in H.A.I., shows 
what evidence there is to support the conjecture that Mme. 
Montour was a French Canadian with no admixture of Indian 
blood, who "for some unaccountable reason" preferred "the 
life and dress of her adopted people." He himself traces her 
parentage to "a French nobleman and an Indian woman." She 
married an Indian, and in any case her linguistically gifted 
children were metis. 



[95] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

says, the history of the 18th century was not a little 
shaped, deserves a better notoriety than that which 
clings to the career of Madame Montour's grand- 
daughter, ''Queen Esther," the blood stained heroine 
of Wyoming. Mme. Montour's daughter Mary was 
''a living polyglot of the tongues of the West, speak- 
ing the English, French, Mohawk, Wyandot (Huron), 
Ottawa, Chipewa, Shawnee and Delaware languages." 
No fewer than seven men of the name served the 
government as interpreters. Mme. Montour's eldest 
son Andrew, whose Indian name was Sattelihu, an 
interpreter of exceptional ability, was long in the em- 
ploy of the Proprietory Government of Pennsylvania. 
His influence and power over the Ohio tribes was re- 
markable. Governor Hamilton, giving him a com- 
mission as captain of Indian allies, in 1752, speaks of 
''your public character and the relation you stand 
in to the Six Nations. ' ' Notwithstanding the damag- 
ing fact that it was Captain Montour's Indians who 
deserted Wasliington at Fort Necessity (he appears to 
have misunderstood the proffered terms of capitula- 
tion), he seems not to have lost credit with the au- 
thorities, for in the same year we find him receiving 
a grant of land at Carlisle, Penn., and nearly twenty 
years later he went with the Moravians^ to ask per- 
mission to establish a mission at Wyoming in that 
State. He and his brother Henry received grants of 

* Count Zinzendorf had visited Andrew's mother, Mme. Montour, in 
her home at Shamokin, Pa. Andrew's nephews, Margaret's grand- 
sons, joined the Moravian Church. 

[96] 



The Gift of Tongues 

''Donation lands" from the government of Penn- 
sylvania, in recognition of their services'. 

A French mixed-blood who valiantly aided the 
United States by interpreting for Col. Henry Dodge 
in the Sank and Fox war was the Winnebago Pierre 
Paquette or Pauquette ( Kau-kish-kaka, or White 
Crow). Born in St. Louis in 1796, he was in charge 
of the trading post at (Portage City) Fort Winne- 
bago, where he kept fifteen yoke of oxen to haul 
boats over the portage between the Fox and the Wis- 
consin Rivers. He also interpreted for Generals Scott 
and Armstrong at the treaty of Fort Armstrong in 
1832, and was afterward deputed to teach the Winne- 
bagoes to cultivate their ' ' Indian Farm ' ' town at Cale- 
donia (formerly Black Earth, Wisconsin). At one 
time Paquette had a farm and tavern at Belief ontaine, 
and supplied beef and horses to the Winnebagoes 
under government contract. He was killed by a 
drunken Indian. The Hon. Henry Merrill, a native 
of New York State, the first senator in the Wisconsin 
Legislature, who was postmaster at Fort Winnebago 
("the Indian Farm"), describes Pierre Paquette as 
''the best specimen of nature's nobleman I ever met." 
All who knew him would take his word as soon as 
any man's bond. He used to trust the Indians from 
year to year without books, carrying the accounts in 
his head, and when they brought in furs they were 



' Donation lands were unoccupied lands in western Pennsylvania and 
the Ohio county, reserved to be allotted to soldiers of the Revolu- 
tionary War in lieu of pay. Their use was later extended to 
cover other claims against the United States. 

[97] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

always satisfied with what he said they owed. When 
he died the Indians felt that they had lost their best 
friend. Man-za-mon-aka, who killed him, was never 
happy again, and dared not show himself anywhere 
among his nation, but had to hide. At Paquette's 
death, says Mr. Merrill, the Indians owed him, and 
afterward paid, $22,000, but the Fur Company took 
possession and his heirs never received a cent. 
Paquette built the first (Roman Catholic) church in 
that region. 

When the Territorial government of Wisconsin 
was formed in 1836 Ave find Governor Dodge appoint- 
ing one Pascal Paquette his aide-de-camp with the 
rank of Colonel, but the connection between him and 
Pierre has not been traced. Pierre's son Moses was 
made Indian agent at Portage, ''an earnest, truthful 
man, ' ' says Thwaites. In the present generation there 
are a number of Paquettes scattered through the 
Northwest, all of them of good repute. The Rev. 
Peter Paquette is Indian agent in Arizona; J. 
Paquette is superintendent and agent of the Fort De- 
fiance government school, of which his sister, Mary 
Paquette, is Girls' Matron. Of the brother the Hon. 
Warren K. Moorehead writes (''The American In- 
dian," p. 252, 1914), "Superintendent Paquette at 
Fort Defiance is extending educational work through- 
out his Reservation, and reaches a larger percentage 
of school age than are being reached elsewhere in the 
Navaho country." The Rev. Frank Paquette is an 
Episcopal minister in Duluth. The Rev. F. H. 

[98] 




'•»4t »J*4 



^^^-t>^ 



¥ 







I'lKliKK (iAKIM'lAl' ill 1«79 

French- Arickara 

Interpreter at Fort Berthold Agency 

Courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society. 



The Gift of Tongues 

Paquette, Methodist minister at Sawyer, Minn., is 
doubtless a member of the same family, which in 
Canada counts many members of pure French blood. 

A metis of the Aricara tribe, Pierre Garreau, son 
of the ' ' Mr. Garreau ' ' of Lewis and Clark, was taken 
to St. Louis for education and taught the baker's 
trade. He spoke French and several Indian lan- 
guages, but never gained a thorough acquaintance 
with English. He served as interpreter at the Fort 
Berthold Agency, though in matters of importance he 
would work through the medium of some Frenchman 
who spoke better English than he. He was courteous, 
very intelligent and highly esteemed by whites and 
Indians alike. Notwithstanding his opportunities in 
St. Louis he could neither read nor write, but under- 
stood picture writing remarkably well. He died in 
1881. 

The complicated difficulties sometimes incident to 
interpretation, suggested by the experiences of Gar- 
reau, were well exemplified during the exploring ex- 
pedition of Lewis and Clark, especially among the 
unknown tribes of the Rocky Mountains. '^We spoke 
in English," they write (2; 298), one of our men 
translated into French to Charbonneau, he to his 
wife (Sacajewea) in Minnetaree, she into Shoshonee, 
and the young Shoshonee prisoner explained to the 
Chopunnuh in their dialect." 

As the gift of tongues was in the earlier days a 
necessary part of the equipment of the successful 
scout, we naturally find many French mixed-bloods 

[99] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

serving the government in this capacity. Scores of 
names might be given where only a few may be men- 
tioned. '^ Pierre Navarre, the famous scout of 1812" 
(Toledo Commercial, 1874), was of distinguished 
French lineage, as we shall later see. He was General 
Harrison's scout, and was reported to have been 
''among those who killed Tecumseh." Gabriel Ren- 
ville, a Sisseton (Sioux) chief, a master in outing 
and who rendered very brilliant service under Gen. 
Sibley, was the son or grandson of a French trader. 
His mother was the beautiful Winona Crawford, 
daughter of Captain Crawford of the British army 
and a Sisseton woman. Born in 1824, Gabriel was a 
playmate of *Hhe Sibley boys," and hunted with them 
when they all lived in St. Paul. During the Sioux 
massacre and war of 1862 he was a valued friend of 
the whites. Later he was instrumental in the return 
of many white captives taken by the Sioux. In 1867, 
when thirty-seven Sioux were taken to Washington to 
sign a treaty, Gabriel Renville and Wakanto (Good 
Medecine) went with them, the former as interpreter. 
Gabriel Renville won distinction as Chief Scout under 
Gen. Sibley, and for many years held the honorable 
office of Chief of Scouts in the Army of the United 
States. 

Joseph La Framboise of tlie well-known La 

Framboise family was army scout under Gen. Sibley 

and figured largely in the surrender of the Eastern 

Sioux after the Menominee outbreak. John Bruyier 

[100] 



The Gift of Tongues 

was Gen. Miles 's scout and ''one of the best he ever 
had." 

It was interesting to see that almost without 
exception the interpreters who accompanied the In- 
dian delegations to the Inauguration of President Wil- 
son were metis. Joseph Packineau, the Gros Ventre 
from Fort Berthold ; Gus H. Boileau or Beaulieu, the 
Ojibway lawyer, who worked hard and valiantly for 
his people* ; the Menominee Mitchel Dick from 
Keshena Agency, the Flathead Louis Pierre (descend- 
ant of Pierre Pierre, who was killed by Iroquois at 
Lachine in 1690) ; Antoine Denomie from South 
Dakota, a graduate of Carlisle; Chancey Yellowrobe, 
the successful young rancher of the Sioux tribe, also 
a graduate of Carlisle, who believes that ''the basis 
of success for the Indian is remaining on the soil," 
and "being wary of the white land shark," and who 
finds that the three great problems before the Amer- 
ican Indian today are "the successful solution of 
the bread and butter question, intelligent and effective 
control of tuberculosis and trachoma, and complete 
emancipation as a government ward, ' ' — all these have 
French blood. 



* Gus Beaulieu' s father was Paul Beaulieu, one of two brothers 
who in 1853 accompanied Gen. Stevens on his exploring tour 
from the Mississippi to the Pacific, (Supra, p. 125,6). He was 
born in 1852 at Crow Wing, Minn., a town founded by his 
father, an agent of the American Fur Trading Company. He 
was a leader among the Chippewas and devoted much time and 
money to fighting for their interests. In this struggle he made 
himself obnoxious to the Indian Bureau, but his motives appear 
to have been unselfish. His popularity is shown by the fact that 
at his funeral at White Earth (August, 1917) both the Episcopal 
and the Roman Catholic rectors took part, and the Agency 
flag was lowered to half mast. 

[101] 



IX 
The Metis as a Trader 

THAT the French mixed-blood has a marked 
aptitude for trade appears on every page of 
the history of this continent. Mr. Andrew 
Macfarland, writing in Justin Winsor's "Narrative 
and Critical History" of the bushrangers who mar- 
ried freely into Indian nations, says that their off- 
spring were conspicuous among traders for their skill 
and courage. Of like opinion was Gen. Lewis Cass, 
who wrote to Secretary James Buchanan that ''the 
half-breeds scattered through the Lake Superior re- 
gion, principally the descendants of French voy- 
ageurs, have for many years been engaged in the 
laborious duties of the Indian trade. ' ' This is natural 
enough; the first relations between French and In- 
dians were trade relations. The early civilization of 
much of our Middle West may be traced to metis 
traders. 

We have seen the attitude of England on the 
subject of the Indian trade and we find the govern- 
ment of the United States from the beginning alive 
to the value of Indian and later of metis aptitude 
for trade. State papers from 1785 (American State 
Papers, Vol. 2, p. 116, and passim for more than fifty 
years) show treaties with the Indians carefully foster- 
ing their trade for the benefit of the whites. The 

r 102 ] 



The Metis as a Trader 

methods of trade in those early days made such foster- 
ing important, but it was the French mixed-bloods 
who in every case blazed the trail for the American 
trader. In 1775 Louis Viviat, a trader in the Illinois 
country, negotiated for the purchase of two large 
tracts on the Wabash from the Piankeshaw Indians, 
who, as we have seen, had intermarried freely with 
the French settlers in Ouatenon (not far from Vin- 
cennes), and were friendly to the Colonies through 
the Revolutionary War/ All the traders on the Red 
River of the North in 1801 were evidently metis. The 
names Michel Langlois, J. B. Desmarais (a Huguenot 
name) Louis Dorion, Charbonneau (both of whom we 
meet four years later with Lewis and Clark), Auguste 
Brisebois, whose son Michel was twenty years later a 
trader in Prairie du Chien, are identified with the 
Indian trade. In 1803 the future Chicago consisted 
of only four rude huts or cabins of Canadian-French 
traders with Indian wives, on the site which the 
earliest explorers who came this way, in 1670, had 
found occupied by a Miami village. La Salle's party, 
on. their way through this region, met "the noble 
savage" Chief Chicago of this tribe. 

In the region of the Great Lakes the way of trade 
had largely been opened before American occupation, 
and such men of pure French lineage as John Baptiste 
Beaubien in Fort Dearborn (Chicago) and Solomon 

1 The Wabash Indians were deeply disturbed, after American occupa- 
tion of the Ohio valley, that they had not the French traders to 
deal with, (instead of Gov. St. Clair). The French traders are 
leaving, they complained to him, ' 'because you plunder them 
every day.'' 

[103] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

Juneau in Milwaukee (both of whom had Indian 
wives) carried on an extensive business by sailing 
vessels with Detroit, Mackinac and the Lake Superior 
region. Joseph Lacroix came to Milwaukee in 1804 
with his Ottawa wife and family, one of a number of 
metis who traded at this post before the coming of 
Juneau in 1811. In the Green Bay region trade was 
entirely in the hands of such French mixed-bloods as 
the Langlades, Grignons, Viauds and La Framboises. 
Judge Morgan L. Martin, a graduate of Hamilton 
College, who went from Utica, N. Y., to Green Bay in 
1827, found about three hundred civilians there, 
mainly French and metis voyageurs. In the fall, he 
says, a trader, metis or American, setting out for the 
Indian country, would engage four or five of these, 
equipping them with one-horse carts built with im- 
mense wheels without irons (the '^ barefoot carts" of 
the Pembina metis), some of them to cut and haul 
w^ood, make little truck patches and help in trading, 
the more trustworthy to be sent in canoes along the 
waterways with goods to various points, or on pack 
horses to Rock River or Winnebago Lake, to remain 
all winter trading. Among the traders with Indian 
wives was ' ' the gentlemanly half-breed Lapence, ' ' who 
had been Senator from the Territory,^ and Joseph 
Bales, whom the English called Bailly, and who 

2 The letter book of William Burnett, who traded at Michilimackinac 
and in 1792 had a storehouse where Chicago stands, contains 
a playful allusion to "the bearer of this letter, Mr. Lapence, 
one of the principal senators of this province". The letter is 
dated Feb. 6, 1791 and a footnote says that Lapence is "a gen- 
tlemanly half-breed", and that "principal senator" is "a recog- 
nition of an imijortant part of tlie new American government." 

[104] 



The Metis as a Trader 

traded at Fort Dearborn '^ before American occupa- 
tion, sending his half-Indian daughters to Detroit and 
Montreal for education. Esther Bailly married the 
son of Lieut. Whistler of Fort Dearborn; Rozanne 
married the president of the Illinois State Bank of 
Chicago. In the treaty of 1833, the last treaty with 
Indian executives in Chicago, we find a long list of 
mixed-bloods receiving money from the government 
in consideration of land claims ; Esther Bailly receiv- 
ing $500, Sophie, Hortense and Therese Bailly $1,000 
between them. Probably the last three were daugh- 
ters of Joseph Bailly 's second wife, a full blood In- 
dian, who had a wonderful gift of story telling, and 
who was in charge of the trading post at Wapasha. 

A leading merchant in the infant village of 
Chicago in 1829 was Medard Beaubien, the metis son 
of ''the first citizen of Chicago," who with his elder 
brother, Charles Henry, received by the treaty of 
1833 a half section of land near the old Ottawa vil- 
lage Kewigrahkeem, or Kewishkum, probably the site 
of Grand Rapids, Mich. Their father, Jean Baptiste 
Beaubien, of an ancient French family (perhaps 
originally of the name Trotier) from the old French 
department of La Perche (says Ohio Antiquities), 
married Mah-naw-beno-qua, sister of the Potawatomie 
Chief Shab-bo-na. The two sons were sent to Prince- 
ton for education, and the younger, Medard or 
Medore, became a leading merchant in his home city. 

3 Fort Dearborn was completed in 1804, burned in 1812, rebuilt in 
1814; Chicago was divided into town lots in 1831. 

[ 105 ] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

He was also clerk of election in 1830 and trustee of 
the first Town Boards He married liis cousin, a 
daughter of the Potawatomie Chief Joseph La Fram- 
boise. We read in Wentworth's ^' Early Chicago" 
that this was "a high-toned wedding, well worthy of 
an Indian chief's daughter, the Indian war dance in- 
cluded, in which many of the white young men and 
ladies joined. ' ' Medard Beaubien subsequently joined 
the tribe of his mother and wife, was elected chief, 
and eventually led the tribe to Silver Lake, Shawnee 
County, Kansas, of which city he was mayor when 
he died in 1883. 

The Indian mother of these sons having died in 
their early childhood, in 1814 J. B. Beaubien, who 
was becoming very wealthy in the Indian trade, mar- 
ried the charming Josette La Framboise, metisse 
daughter of Francis La Framboise, and sister of the 
Potawatomie Chief Joseph La Framboise. She was 
living with the Kenzie family at the time of the mas- 
sacre at Fort Dearborn (1812) and with them escaped 
in a boat, taking shelter with the Potawatomie Chief 
Alexander Robinson. Josette Beaubien had twelve 
children, whom she brought up in a home of much 
refinement and beauty, sending the sons to New York 
and the daughters to France for education. A relic of 
the latter fact remains in the "marvelous French lace 
veil" owned by Mrs. Josette Beaubien, now in the 
Chicago Historical Library. 

The La Framboise family, all French mixed- 
bloods, had a large part in the early business life of 
[100] 




CAROLINE BEAUBIEN 
Daughter of Jean Baptiste and Josette La Framboise Beaubien 
French-Potawatomie 
Courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society 



The Metis as a Trader 

the Middle and North West, all of them being trusted 
and influential eniployes of the American Fur Com- 
pany. Chief Joseph La Framboise and his brother 
Claude were voters in Chicago in 1825. In the same 
year the Chief, one of the fourteen taxpayers in that 
village, bought one thousand acres of forest reservation 
in its vicinity and opened it to settlement. It was 
doubtless in recognition of the services of Claude La 
Framboise as interpreter that a grant to him of a 
section of land on the Kiviere aux Plaines, Chicago, 
appears in the treaty of Prairie du Chien in 1829. 
The two sections next adjoining were granted to Chief 
Alexander Robinson, of the recently united Potawa- 
tomie, Ottawa and Chippewa tribes. The metis chil- 
dren of Robinson and his wife, Catherine Chevallier, 
were born on this land, and their venerable and much 
loved da^ughter still lives there. The Chicago His- 
torical Society would like to have ''this lovely bit of 
woodland, with the adjoining La Framboise Reserva- 
tion" reserved as a public park, "for associations 
more romantic it would be difficult to find." (Report, 
1912.) 

When Chicago ceased to be a fur-trading post 
these and many other French mixed-bloods in the 
company's service moved farther west. Very early 
in the history of those territories we find La Fram- 
boises under varied orthographies in Wisconsin, South 
Dakota and even in Oregon. So early as 1785, indeed, 
Alexander La Framboise, cousin of Chief Joseph and 
Claude, was trading on the site of Milwaukee, then 
[107] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

a village of agricultural Indians cultivating five or six 
acres each. He was joined about 1802 by his brother, 
Joseph-Francis, who had long been trading from 
Michilimackinac, with his metisse wife, Madeline, 
daughter of Jean Baptiste Mascotte, whose acquaint- 
ance, with that of his wife Misigan, daughter of 
Chief Ke-wan-a-quot (Returning Cloud), we have al- 
ready made/ Mascotte had a large family of sons 
and daughters, whom he sent to Montreal for educa- 
tion. Dying, however, when the youngest two, Made- 
leine, afterw^ard wife of Joseph-Francis La Fram- 
boise, and Therese, later Mrs. Schindler, whom we 
have met as the grandmother of Mrs. Baird of Green 
Bay, were respectively three months and five years old, 
these two little girls failed of a like opportunity. In 
1809 Joseph-Francis La Framboise, ''a fine w^orthy 
man," says Judge Morgan of Milwaukee, and a man 
of deep piety and great force of character, was sent 
by the Company to found a post at Grand Haven, 
Mich. That winter, while kneeling in prayer, he was 
shot by a Winnebago to whom he had refused to sell 
drink. His wife, Madeline Mascotte, ^'a, woman of 
extraordinary ability, ' ' says Col. Hubbard of Chicago, 
successfully carried on his business after his death, 
being long retained in the employ of the company 
as one of its most competent and trusted managers. 
She is described as tall, handsome and refined, speak- 
ing French like a Parisian though always wearing the 
dress of an Indian squaw. Col. Hubbard says that 

* Supra p. 67. 

[108] 



The Metis as a Trader 

she had been taught by her husband to read and 
write, and after his death, notwithstanding her busi- 
ness responsibilities, she kept up her studies, becom- 
ing really proficient in French literature, with an 
extensive acquaintance with French classics. She de- 
voted much attention to the instruction of Indian 
youth. Her cabin in Grand Haven has been pre- 
served as the earliest historic relic of the city. She 
died in 1846 at the age of sixty-six. 

Madame La Framboise was not the only success- 
ful metisse trader of her day. Her sister, Therese 
Mascotte, the energetic wife of the trader, George 
Schindler, after the failure of her husband's health 
successfully carried on his business, while he, being a 
man of education, opened a boys' school on Mackinac 
Island. Another metisse member of the Michili- 
mackinac circle, the beautiful wife of Dr. David 
Mitchell, surgeon in the British army, intelligent, as 
well as ''extremely pretty and delicate," but with no 
book-learning, was not only a successful farmer, rais- 
ing hay, potatoes and corn for sale, but an able fur 
trader^ She educated her two sons in Montreal, and 
her daughters, like so many French-Indian girls, 
were sent to Paris for education. 

It was while visiting these "handsome, attractive 
and entertaining" daughters of Mrs. Mitchell, that in 
the winter of 1816-17 Mme. Madeline La Framboise's 
daughter, the cultivated and charming Josette, met the 
Commandmant of Michilimackinac, Captain Benjamin 
Pierce, whose brother Franklin later became President 
[109] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

of the United States. They were married that same 
winter. The wedding was a brilliant affair, writes 
after long years, from her childhood's memories of 
the occasion, the bride's younger cousin Mrs. Therese 
Baird, granddaughter of Mme. Schindler. 

Mme. La Framboise's eldest son, Joseph, born 
in Michilimackinac, who was graduated from college 
at the early age of fifteen, was the first settler of South 
Dakota, having been sent in 1817 by the metis manager 
of the American Fur Company, Joseph Rolette, to 
establish a trading post in what is now Flandreau. 
His first post was at the mouth of the Teton River 
and was called Fort Framboise. He afterward built 
Fort Teton and later Fort Pierre. In that remote 
region he always kept with him a small but choice 
collection of books. He was "a gracious host and 
delightful companion," says Catlin. He spoke not 
only French and various Indian languages, but was 
a master of English. His first wife was the daughter 
of the Wahpeton (Sioux) chief Walking Day, and 
their son Joseph, third of the name, born in 1839, was 
a ''typical Sioux," who "rendered inestimable service 
to the whites in the days of the great massacre, ' * says 
Mr. Doane Robinson, the historian of South Dakota. 
His mother died young and he appears to have lived 
with her tribe, especially after 1846, when his father 
married Jane, the Scotch-Indian daughter of Col. 
Robert Dickson. In 1900, in his seventy-first year, he 
was living on his reservation, unlike his father, 
illiterate, a condition easily explicable in the early 
[110] 



The Metis as a Trader 

days of Dakota Territory, but like him highly intelli- 
gent, his mind a repository of family traditions, and 
proud of being, according to Indian relationship, 
' ' cousin of the President, ' ' through his cousin, Josette 
La Framboise Pierce. 

It was apparently Joseph's cousin Frank, per- 
haps a son of Alexander, since he is called the nephew 
of old Joseph La Framboise, who built and was in 
charge of the second Fort La Framboise, which was 
later occupied by Gen. Sully's troops. 

In early days the advantages of the site of the 
Potawatomie village where Milwaukee now stands, 
for a branch post of the great fur trading- centre at 
Michilimackinac, were perceived by others than the 
La Framboise brothers. The Frenchman Le Claire, 
father of the metis whom Iowa remembers with grati- 
tude,^ was a partner of Joseph-Francis La Framboise, 
and appears to have been like minded with him in 
refusing to sell liquor to Indians. They traded 
blankets, ammunition, calico, woolen cloth, pipes, 
knives, awls, needles and vermillion paint for furs 
and peltries, which La Framboise took to Michili- 
mackinac and Le Claire to Detroit. 

In 1785 came also to Milwaukee Andrew 
Jacques Viaud, metis grandson of a Frenchman of 
Huguenot strain who had migrated to Canada during 
the later Wars of Religion, and whose son, born near 
Montreal, had married a half-blood niece of the Pota- 
watomie chief On-a-que-sa, Angelique Le Roy, of the 

c Supra p. 86. 

[Ill] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

Le Roy family, which we have already met/ Andrew 
Jacques Viaud, Sr., grandson of the emigrant, who 
had married into his mother's tribe, traded in Mil- 
waukee with Alexander La Framboise in 1785, also 
establishing a branch of his business in Green Bay, 
where he soon secured a farm, to which he retired in 
1836. He had numerous children. Andrew Jacques, 
Jr., who later became a United States Senator, was a 
partner of Solmon Juneau, who had married Viand's 
half-sister, the charming metisse Josette Viaud. An- 
drew Viaud, Jr. dictated his reminiscences to the 
late R. G. Thwaites in 1887. Mr. Thwaites said that 
he could not read or write, but in view of the educa- 
tional advantages which we have seen to exist at Green 
Bay in his generation this seems hardly possible. No 
doubt he could not read and write English. 

Mr. Viand's sister, Mrs. Juneau, among many 
contributions to the welfare of the new community, 
Milwaukee, rendered it and the whole country a signal 
service when the Indians, not unnaturally incensed 
because their property was thrown open to settlement 
before the time stipulated by treaty, planned a general 
massacre and would have carried it out but for her. 
Her husband being absent, she remained in the streets 
all night watching over the whites. (Buck's ''Early 
Milwaukee," p. 2, note). She became the mother of 
twelve children, all of whom were educated and be- 
came prominent. One of her sons was the founder 
of Juneau, Alaska. 

^ Supra p. 75. 

[112] 



The Metis as a Trader 

Madame Juneau, says Judge Lewis Morgan, was 
' ' a most amiable and excellent woman, noted for deeds 
of charity. . . . She was one of the proverbial neat 
and tidy French women," he adds, furthermore say- 
ing that "the old trading house" of Solomon Juneau, 
so far from being the filthy, disgusting house repre- 
sented in the "History of Milwaukee" (Buck's), was 
in all respects neat and tidy, "for the French women 
knew how to make their habitations attractive." 

Mrs. Juneau's younger brother, Louis Viaud, 
became Chief of the Potawatomies, and accompanied 
his tribe when in accordance with the treaty of 1833 
they went west, first to Council Bluffs and later to 
Kansas. Jacques Viaud, the third brother, went into 
business in Milwaukee, and in 1835 was keeping the 
Cottage Inn in that town. We get a glimpse into 
pioneer social life in Buck's remark (op. cit.) that 
"Jacques Vieux (sic) kept the Cottage Inn, as he 
said, 'like hell,' and he did." The Inn was a rendez- 
vous for both Indians and whites. Jacques Viaud, 
like his brother Louis, married a metisse of his tribe. 
He accompanied Louis the Chief when the Potawa- 
tomies moved west, and died in Council Bluffs. An- 
other brother, Amable, was a noted fur trader in Mil- 
waukee. He died in Muscogee in 1887. Many Viands 
received a section of land under the treaty of 1833, 
and under the name Viaud or Viall their descendants, 
all of them metis, may be found today in various 
parts of the Northwest. In 1871 James Viall was 
Superintendent of Indians in Montana. 
[113] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

Permanently identified with the pioneer history 
of Wisconsin is the Grignon family, whom we have 
already met in Green Bay/ The father, Pierre 
Grignon, of the old French Grig-nan family into which 
the daughter of Madame de Sevigne married, was a 
voyageur in the Lake Superior region and an inde- 
pendent trader in Green Bay before 1763 ; ' ' very dig- 
nified and well bred and charming," writes Mrs. 
Kinzie. ''The most important man in Green Bay," 
wrote an American who later joined the Green Bay 
colony. His first wife was a full blood Menominee, his 
second Louise Domitilde, the metisse daughter of Sieur 
Charles de Langlade, ''the father of Wisconsin." By 
her he had nine children. For their education he had 
as private tutor a French-Canadian gentleman, 
Jacques Porlier, who in 1820 became Judge of Brown 
County, Wis., and after Chief Justice of the State. 

Jacques Porlier, some while tutor of the Grignon 
children, became a member of the house of Porlier 
and Grignon and married a metisse, Margaret Gresie, 
daughter of a Frenchman living with the Menominee 
and a woman of that tribe. While Judge of Brown 
County, Porlier translated into French the Revised 
Statutes of the State, the manuscript of which is pre- 
served in the Wisconsin Historical Society. His de- 
scendants received a section of land and money by 
the treaty of 1833. His metis son, Jean Jacques, who 
died in 1838, left a large family ; one son, Louis, who 

' Supra, pp. 65, 68. 

[114] 



The Metis as a Trader 

married a daughter of Augustin Grignon, has been a 
generous benefactor of the Historical Society of 
Wisconsin. 

Pierre Grignon 's daughters, as we have learned 
not only from Mrs. Baird but also from Mrs. Kinzie, 
were strikingly dignified, well bred young ladies. 
His sons, Pierre, Augustin, Amable, Charles, and 
Perriot (grandsons and heirs of Charles de Langlade), 
were "courteous and open-hearted" men, partners in 
an extensive business, the centre of which was Green 
Bay. All had a numerous posterity. The business 
houses of their sons and sons-in-law were well known 
all over the West. In 1836 Amable Grignon and his 
partner, Lieut. Marcy, built at Grignon 's Rapids the 
first sawmills on the Wisconsin River. Antonin 
Grignon was interpreter with John de la Ronde, who 
tells (in the seventh volume of the Wisconsin His- 
torical Collections) a most interesting story of their 
adventures. Charles Grignon established a business 
at Fort Winnebago (Portage) near Oshkosh, Wis. 

These traders, says Turner (op. cit.) fixed the 
sites of the leading cities of the Northwest; their 
trails became our early roads. By 1834 there were 
"at least forty-five main posts and 'jack-knife' posts 
in Wisconsin." 

The Grignons did not, however, confine their 
interest to business. Judge Martin (W. H. C. xi), 
mentions Pierre and Louis Grignon as farmers in 
Green Bay, "fine, very good hearted and hospitable;" 
Augustin Grignon, who had a frame store and traded 

[115] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

with the Indians, had also a ' ' good farm, well stocked, 
with a comfortable log house and a large frame 
barn" at Kaukana Rapids, below the present city of 
that name. These brothers, Pierre, Louis and Augus- 
tin, were partners in trade with John (afterward 
Judge) Lawe at Green Bay. Judge Martin says that 
Lawe, Grignon and Porlier (afterward Judge) were 
leading farmers, but did little work, though ''wide 
awake in business." Alexander Grignon, ''a young 
half-blood Menominee," doubtless a son of one of 
these brothers, went as interpreter with Judges Doty 
and Martin when they explored the region between 
Green Bay and Prairie du Chien in 1829. 

In 1829 Louis Grignon, whom we have seen 
holding a British commission in 1812-16, was chair- 
man of the first public meeting ever held in Green 
Bay, at which a petition was drawn up asking Con- 
gress to build a road from Green Bay to Chicago, and 
also to improve the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers, water 
being at that period the chief means of travel. 

The trading interests of this family carried them 
far afield. Turner writes in his "History of the Fur 
Trade ' ' that Amable Grignon ' ' of the parish of Green 
Bay, Upper Canada," wintered on Lac Qui Parle 
(Minn.) in 1818, Lake Athabasca in 1819, in 1820 in 
the hyperborean regions of Great Slave Lake, "re- 
ceiving from the American Fur Company a salary 
of $400 and found in tobacco and shoes and two 
doges ' ' besides ' ' the usual equipment given to clerks. ' ' 
[116] 



The Metis as a Trader 

Joseph Rolette, whom we have met in Green Bay/ 
and who has been mentioned as holding a British com- 
mission in 1812, was one of the most marked charac- 
ters of Wisconsin in the early days. He was prob- 
ably the grandson of Jean Joseph Rolette, who came 
from France to Canada in 1750. Whom the emigrant 
married or where he lived there seem to be no means 
of ascertaining, bnt from the fact that his son lived in 
Prairie du Chien, which at the time of his arrival was 
an Indian village, and later, almost to the present day, 
a town of mixed-bloods, it is not improbable that he 
married an Indian. Joseph the grandson married the 
daughter of ''the gentle Sioux Chief Wapasha II," 
and later, as we have seen, the elder sister of Mrs. The- 
rese Baird. Like all French mixed-bloods who held 
British commissions in the war of 1812, he became a 
good American citizen at the close of the war, though 
during its progress he was court martialed by the Brit- 
ish on the charge of being in collusion with his father- 
in-law, Wapasha, against their interests, the Chief 
being in nominal alliance with the British in this war. 

The war over, Rolette traded widely for the 
American Fur Company, being reputed to be not only 
the most active and the largest trader in the North- 
west, but also the best educated and most enlightened. 
Though we repeatedly meet him at the Sault and in 
St. Paul, he being a partner in the Company with 
Henry H. Sibley (afterwards Brigadier-General), his 
home appears to have been Prairie du Chien. There 
he had a contract to supply the troops at Fort Snelling 

8 Supra, p. 68. 

[117] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

with beef, the Astors going on his bond, and there in 
his later years he exercised a fine hospitality, enter- 
taining many celebrities, among them the Bishop of 
Nancy and various French noblemen, and also Jeffer- 
son Davis and Gen. Zachary Taylor, with both of 
whom he was intimate. In these later years he de- 
lighted in reading Horace, as he had done In his boy- 
hood. In 1837 he gave one thousand piastres toward 
building the first church in Prairie du Chien. Under 
it he was buried. 

His son, ' 'young Joe Rolette, ' ' joined the Pembina 
band of Chippewas (Ojibways), nearly all of them 
metis, of whom Judge Flandreau, in his ''History of 
Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier" (1900, pp. 
70-79), gives a picturesque description. For years 
they had traded with the American Fur Company, 
which in 1844 had established a trading post at Pem- 
bina, Mich., two miles south of our northern frontier. 
The Pembinas brought in furs and took back their 
trading supplies by the famous Pembina or Red River 
carts, which as we have seen " were a peculiar two- 
wheeled construction, entirely of wood and raw hide, 
with ' ' barefoot ' ' wheels five and a half feet in diame- 
ter, with a tread of three and a half or four inches. 
They were drawn by one ox, and long trains of these 
carts would come in, loaded each with from 600 to 
800 pounds of furs and peltries, four carts to one 
driver, making fifteen miles a day through swamps 
and sloughs impassable to other vehicles. Their trail 

» Supra, p. 104. i " 

[118] 




MEMBER OF THE 
MINNESOTA 



YOUNG JOE" ROLETTE 
LEGISLATURE OF 
French-Chippewa, Pembina Band 
See p. 162 
Courtesy of tl^e Minnesota Club, St. Paul, Minn 



The Metis as a Trader 

in the prairie was deeply cut and lasted for years. 
The driver always wore the Pembina sash, "a beauti- 
ful girdle, giving them a most picturesque appear- 
ance." Two full length portraits of Joe Rolette are 
preserved, one in the Gallery of the Minnesota His- 
torical Society, and the other in the Minnesota Club, 
St. Paul, both the gifts of a very dear friend of the 
original, says Judge Flandreau. 

Not a few Huguenot names appear among these 
Pembina Chippewas, — Demarais, Le Noir, Denomie 
and others, especially Bottineau, as we shall later see. 
They probably date from the expulsion of the Hugue- 
nots from Quebec by Richelieu. Mr. R. R. Elliot, in 
"The Last of the Barons" (Mich. Pion. and Hist. Soc. 
21:509), says of men like the Rolettes, Renvilles, 
Beaubiens, La Framboises and other French mixed- 
bloods, "if baronial rights and dignities were admissi- 
ble under Federal law, these were entitled to such 
special privileges .... they compose a chaplet recall- 
ing ancestral virtues most worthily perpetuated." 

In 1892 two Rolettes, by name Joseph and 
Jerome, signed as members of the Turtle Mountain 
band of (Pembina) Chippewas in North Dakota. 

There were many French names among the 
mixed-bloods of whom in 1885 the future Senator 
Owen, then agent at Shawnee Town, I. T., wrote that 
they in particular were intelligent and progressive, 
using all means in their control to acquire the ad- 
vantage of accumulated wealth. In general those 
means, like those of their ancestors, were those of 

[119] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

trade. The late Rev. J. A. Gilfillan, for many years 
a missionary among the jib ways, wrote to the 
author, shortly before his death in 1914, ''there are, 
I believe, hundreds of French mixed-blood traders or 
storekeepers among the Indians. This is the occupa- 
tion they most naturally take to, rather than farming 
or artisanship. It is perfectly natural for them to 
engage in trade among the Indians; speaking their 
language gives them an advantage over others." 

Among the Sisseton Sioux of Dakota are at the 
present day well-to-do traders bearing the names La 
Framboise, La Bell and La Croix. The French an- 
cestor of La Croix was a large trader who employed 
many Indians, was much loved by them, and married 
a Sioux girl. The ancestor of La Bell was the only 
survivor of the destruction of Maillettestown, ' who, 
as we have seen, escaped from the ill-fated village to 
the Sioux, where his son became a trader, married 
an Indian girl and had a large family. The sons took 
homesteads in Babylon, twenty miles from Sisseton. 
Louis La Bell is one of the largest farmers, white or 
Indian, in all the region. All these families have in- 
termarried among one another, and all are progressive 
and extremely well to do. Indeed, ''the majority of 
these metis Sioux," writes their priest, the Rev. 
Odoric Derenthal, "are doing well in business and 
trade." 



Supra, p. 82. 

[720] 



French Indians and Exploration 

AT the foundation of exploration lies trade, 
which in fact, by supplying the means for its 
support, alone in the first instance made ex- 
ploration possible. 

How much the exploration of the region imme- 
diately beyond the boundaries of the Thirteen Colo- 
nies owes to metis traders ! Not quite so deeply, per- 
haps, is the successful occupation of the Far "West 
indebted to them; still their part in it was large, if 
subordinate. Not an insignificant number of the trad- 
ing posts of which in 1805 Alexander Henry sent 
returns to the American Fur Company was in exist- 
ence when the Frenchman Verendrye explored the 
Far West in the early eighteenth century, and nearly 
every post named in Henry's report of nearly a cen- 
tury later was in charge of a French mixed-blood. In 
Henry's roster of a single brigade of French voy- 
ageurs and ''their wives and papooses" are many 
names familiar to the student of exploration : Char- 
bonneaus and Renvilles, Roys and Leclaires, whose 
memory after more than a century is honored in the 
Northwest. 

Though the region beyond the Rockies was not 
quite such a terra incognita as Captains Lewis and 
Clark supposed when in 1804, not far west of the 
[121] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

Little Missouri, they wrote, ''No white man has ever 
been here except two Frenchmen, one of whom, Le- 
page, is with us," yet it is certain that the French 
Canadians who after the English Conquest of Canada 
went to the Pacific Coast and established trading posts 
in Oregon, as well as in Vancouver, went thither by a 
far easier route than any within the present boun- 
daries of the United States. That taken by Lewis and 
Clark was entirely untrodden except by metis. 

But for their ''half-breed" guides, interpreters 
and watermen, men like Drewyer, "offspring of a 
Canadian Frenchman and an Indian woman," "past 
master in woodcraft, uniting in a wonderful degree the 
dexterous aim of the frontier huntsman with the in- 
tuitive sagacity of the Indian, in pursuing the 
faintest tracks through the forest;" Crusatee, "prin- 
cipal waterman," whose "fiddle resounded night 
after night in the desolate camp, while the men 
danced off their pains and fears ;"^ "Labiche, one of 
the best trackers," the interpreters, Jessaume and 
Toussaint Charbonneau, the French-Minnetaree, who, 
wrote the explorers on his departure, "has been very 
serviceable to us," and his wife (the intrepid 'Bird 

^ Not so good a marksman as fiddler, perhaps, since he shot Captain 
Lewis by accident. No harm came of it, however. 

2 This Charbonnean has been characterized by some recent writers 
as "a worthless fellow", and probably he does not shine forth 
with the lustre which seems to have adorned his slave-wife, the 
heroic Sacajawea; but he seems to have given good satisfaction 
to Lewis and Clark. Later we find him an attache of the Rocky 
Mountain Fur Company, and Major Andrew's interpreter with 
the Arickara. Still later we hear of ''Toussaint Charbonneau, 
a half-Indian boy" whose education was paid for by the Gov- 
ernment — perhaps the "papoose" that accompanied Cbarbon- 
neau and Sacajawea on the Lewis and Clark expedition. 

[122] 



French Indians and Exploration 

Woman,' Sacajawea), particularly useful among 
the Shoshones," all of whom in one capacity or an- 
other had been in the service of traders, — but for all 
these it is hard to imagine that they would ever have 
won through. 

Between 1810 and 1820 there were many metis 
voyageurs in Spokane, servants of the American Fur 
Company. Captain Bonneville, whose adventures 
were immortalized by Irving, had a notable metis 
guide and interpreter, Antoine Godin by name. So 
agile and vigorous was he that he could hunt a buffalo 
on foot and kill it with arrows. His name is per- 
petuated in a river near Fort Hall, Oregon. Astor's 
experiment at Astoria brought to the Pacific Coast 
many more voyageurs, some of them English half- 
breeds, but most of them French-Indians, the enter- 
prise being deemed too difficult and dangerous for 
any but Canadians. Their metisse wives were reputed 
to be good housewives, very good-looking and clever, 
speaking French and English. 

Baptiste Dorion, son of a French trader whom 
Lewis and Clark met on the Upper Missouri and a 
Yankton woman, whose adventures with her children 
after Dorion 's death would figure well in a romance 
(''First Settlers on the Oregon," by Alexander Ross), 
was with the Astor party as a child in 1810, and in 
1834 was guide to John K. Townsend when he crossed 
the Rocky Mountains. Townsend, with whom was 
also "Goddin's son" (Antoine Godin), found, as 
Lewis and Clark had also found, the ''spirits of the 
[ 123 ] 



Our Debt to the Eed Man 

mercurial young half-breeds" an important factor in 
the endurance of his party. On the farther side of 
the range he came in contact with *'a great variety 
of French Canadians calling themselves white, but 
nearly as dark as the Indians," the metis fur traders 
of the Northwest, the men who had reached the Pacific 
long before American explorers had entered Oregon, 
and who, wild and reckless as they might be, prepared 
the way for advancing civilization.^ So late as 1858 
it was Michel La Framboise, living on the Willamette, 
who took the initiative in signing a petition to the 
Government in Washington asking its protection, and 
begging it to occupy the territory of Oregon. 

Up to 1849, the only population other than In- 
dian between the Upper Mississippi River and the 
British possessions was the Pembina settlement in 
Minnesota (supra, p. 118), a settlement perpetuating 
a post established soon after Verendrye built Fort 
Rouge in 1734. Captain Pope, who in 1849 was ex- 
ploring this region for the Government, reported that 
these French mixed-bloods had explored the whole 
country and described it to him as exceptionally fer- 
tile and rich. With the usual American contempt of 
Indian intelligence Captain Pope discredited their 
statement as extravagant, though admitting that these 
Pembinas ''could be favorably compared in enter- 
prise, industry, and law-abiding character with any 
people on earth. By far the greater number speak 

^ Wilkes, who crossed the Rocky Mountains previous to any American 
• settlement, found in Oregon 700 or 800 French Canadians, mainly 
metis, and about 250 in what is now Washington. 

[124] 



French Indians and Exploration 

both languages equally well, ' ' he adds ; " in dress and 
manners more French than Indian." Captain Pope 
took some of them to guide and help him on a long 
canoe excursion, and in his report he expatiates up- 
on their '' strangely fascinating manners," adding 
that they ''are absolutely unwavering in fidelity to 
agreements with the United States." 

Alas, that the same cannot be said of the fidelity 
of the other party ! One blushes to read in the recent 
argument of their attorney, the late Jean Baptiste 
Bottineau, Esq. (Sen. Doc. 444), that the Pembina 
Indians are in a very poor and helpless condition be- 
cause of depredations of white people on their prop- 
erty. 

The outstanding aid lent to American explora- 
tion by French mixed-bloods was of course in the ca- 
pacity of scouts and interpreters, though their part in 
augmenting the food supply is not to be overlooked. 
We have read Captain Lewis's tribute to his hunter 
Drewyer, and noticed the prowess of Antoine Godin 
in the chase. Maximilien of Weid, to whose western 
explorations in 1832-34 we owe much, had a number 
of French mixed-blood hunters, among them Des- 
champs, whose entire family was afterward mur- 
dered at Fort Union. 

When in 1853 President Pierce selected Gen. 
Stevens to carry out his policy of exploration and set- 
tlement of the great west from the Mississippi to the 
Pacific, the major part of which was still unexplored, 
the guides selected by Gen. Stevens were one Beland, 

[125] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

Henry and Paul Beaulieu, Le Frambois and Pierre 
Bottineau, all of them metis, and all except the first 
named of metis families long distinguished in west- 
ern settlement. Of these Pierre Bottineau calls for 
special mention. Guide, voyageur, counsellor, lifelong 
advocate of the interests of his tribe, he had well 
earned Stevens's description as a "most interesting 
companion. . . the great guide and voyageur of Min- 
nesota . . . famous as a buffalo hunter, ' ' who ' ' surpasses 
all his class in truthfulness and great intelligence . . . 
with the broadness of view of an engineer. . .greatly 
esteemed, and known througli all the Territory ... a 
natural gentleman. ' ' A few years earlier he had gone 
with Captain Fisk as guide and Objibway interpreter 
of a large party of emigrants from St. Paul to what is 
now the State of Washington. An appropriation had 
been made by Congress to protect home seekers from 
the Indians, the Sioux and jib ways being then at 
war. A member of the command wrote an interesting 
journal of the expedition, still preserved in manu- 
script. In Bottineau's home at St. Anthony's Falls, 
where Stevens breakfasted with his family, he "saw 
exhibited the most refined and courteous manners. ' ' 

This Bottineau was one of three brothers, Pierre, 
Severe and Charles, all well known in the Northwest, 
who were born on the Red River of the North of a 
French father of Huguenot extraction whose ancestor 
came to Boston with the Faneuils, to whom he is said 
to have been distantly related, and who married Mar- 
garet Sougab, of the Ahdik (Reindeer) clan of the 
great jib way (Chippewa) tribe. The sons followed 
[126] 



French Indians and Exploration 

the life of their father, that of voyageur, trapper and 
hunter. In 1835 Pierre married Grenevieve La Ranee 
— a full blood Ojibway, notwithstanding the decidedly 
French sound of her name, — and settled in what later 
became St. Paul, Minn. Through his marriage he be- 
came related to the most noted Indians of the Ojib- 
way tribe. The descendants traced from his mother, 
Margaret Sougab, in 1910 constituted 60 per cent of 
the Ojibway tribe. 

Pierre Bottineau had been Gen. Sibley's inter- 
preter at Fort Snelling in 1837, and was later his 
guide in exploring the Missouri River and the Far 
Northwest. He is described (''Hist, of St. Paul and 
Ramsey County," J. Fletcher Williams, p. 107) as 
' ' one of the most notable characters of the North- 
west. " " Perhaps no man in the Northwest, ' ' contin- 
ues the historian, ''has passed a life of more romantic 
adventures, exciting occurrences, hairbreadth escapes, 
and 'accidents by flood and field', than Mr. Bottineau. 
He has travelled over every foot of the Northwest and 
knows the country like a map. He speaks almost 
every Indian language in this region. ' ' 

Early in the fifties Pierre Bottineau went with 
Gov. Miller, as hunter and guide, from Minnesota to 
Puget Sound, the two Beaulieus being of the party. 
With Col. Noble Bottineau explored Eraser River in 
1859, and Idaho with Captain Fisk in 1862. A coun- 
ty in South Dakota is named for him. Like Antoine 
Leclaire in Davenport and Charles Picotte in Yankton 
in later years, he was extremely generous to his 
adopted city, St. Paul. In 1846 he bought a new tract, 
[127] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

later called Bottineau's Addition, at St. Anthony's 
Falls and gave it to tlie city. 

''These Bottineau brothers were especially nota- 
ble for their relations with the natives," says Morice 
(op. cit.), ''and numerous metis descendants have done 
much for their fathers' cause and for the evangelizing 
of their mothers' people." Severe Bottineau was 
hardly less prominent in St. Paul and the adjacent re- 
gion than his brother Pierre. Pierre's son, Jean Bap- 
tiste, later counsellor of the Pembinas, (sup. p. 125 and 
inf. p. 170) and his granddaughter, Mrs. Marie Louise 
Bottineau Baldwin, (inf. p. 173), have worthily con- 
tinued the family tradition. Pierre Bottineau died 
at Eed Lake Falls, Minn., in 1895, at the age of 81. 
With him passed the days of the voyageur, the" cou- 
reur du bois, of which he was one of the most noted. 
He was easily the most famous in the long trail from 
the Falls of St. Anthony to old Fort Garry. A mighty 
hunter, trapper and guide, he was the last of a long 
line of hardy pioneers that France gave to America, 
following in a later generation in the paths of Perrot, 
Le Suer, Du Luht, Charlevoix and La Salle. 

Antoine La Roux, a Chippewa metis, was a cele- 
brated guide in the Southwest, as was his son Charles. 
The family is now living on the White Earth Reserva- 
tion. 

Indirectly science, especially geographical science, 
owes something to French mixed-bloods, aside from 
the services which they have rendered to exploration. 
They have also borne some part in map-making. The 
metis Francois Beaubien, born in 1771, became Sir 
[128] .. 




JEAN BAPTISTE BOTTINEAU 

French-Chippewa, Turtle Mountain Band 

See p. 169 



French Indians and Exploration 

John Franklin's guide and drew him a map which 
was of considerable service to him. Jean Baptiste 
Adam, a metis, also served Franklin as interpreter. 
M. Jean Baptiste Nicollet, "the scholarly and dis- 
tinguished astronomer in the employ of the United 
States," as Monette calls him, who in his report of 
1843 presented to Government an invaluable chart of 
the Upper Mississippi, had as his principal guide the 
metis Frangois Brunet, "a man six feet three inches 
high, a giant of great strength, but at the same time 
full of the milk of human kindness and withal an 
excellent geographer," says Monette; adding that it 
was due to this guide that Nicollet was able ''with 
such wonderful accuracy" to set down " in his chart 
many lakes, rivers, creeks and islands which he did 
not see." 

The younger Joseph La Framboise* drew for 
Catlin a map of the Pipestone quarry in South Dakota 
and guided him thither. It was probably Joseph's 
son, whose mother was a full blood Indian, who inter- 
preted for Audubon when he was in that region. 

Schoolcraft owed much of his understanding of 
the Indians to the French Chippewas of his first wife 's 
tribe. In 1820 he received the hospitality of the aged 
Michel Cadotte,^ then living in comfortable retire- 
ment on his farm on Chequamagon Bay. Catlin was 
more than once under obligation to metis, notably to 
the son of a French clerk of the American Fur Com- 
pany, Pierre Le Blanc and a Sisseton woman, who 



Supra, p. 110, 
Siipra, p. 73. 



[129] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

protected Catlin from the rudeness of the Indians 
on that Reservation. This young man was probably 
the Sisseton scout Pierre Le Blanc, who served the 
United States during the Civil War. 

Louis Cadotte, a descendant of Jean Baptiste 
Cadotte, was a carpenter at Sault Ste. Marie when 
Catlin made him the head of a company of Sauteurs 
that he took to London with him. 

Audubon depended largely upo^i metis in his 
travels and investigations. Amid the general chorus 
of approval of this useful class of men his is almost 
the only voice to express a lack of confidence. "I 
fear that all my former opinions of the half-breeds 
are likely to be realized, and that they are more an fait 
at telling lies than anything else," he writes, remark- 
ing also elsewhere that they are so uncertain he can't 
tell whether they will move a step or not. Yet even 
Audubon dwells with affectionate gratitude upon 
''our good hunter Michaud," and gives due credit to 
Joseph Basile, "an excellent marksman and very 
brave in action," as well as to Francois Detaille, 
who offered to accompany him through the Bad 
Lands, where he would find for him various quad- 
rupeds; and also to "one Primaux," who had pre- 
viously interpreted for Maximilian of Wied, and who 
appears to have been the metis son of the well-known 
fur trader after whom Fort Primaux, S. D., was 
named. 

"How much Audubon owed to people of French 
descent for his work ! ' ' saj^s one writer. In Natchez, 
Nicolas Berthoud, who owned a keel boat and took 

[130] 



French Indians and Exploration 

Audubon in it to New Orleans; M. Garnier, hotel 
keeper; Charles Carre, son of a nobleman of the old 
regime. All these were perhaps of pure French ex- 
traction, though there was not a little intermarriage 
between the Choctaws and the French of Natchez, and 
indeed of Mobile, Biloxi and New Orleans. 



[131] 



XI 

French Indians in the Settlement of 
the West 

THE subject has been indicated but not ex- 
hausted in previous chapters. Such names as 
Grignon, Le Claire, La Framboise, Beaubien, 
Rolette, not to refer to many less conspicuous, per- 
haps, but hardly less important in the opening and 
development of the vast region which at the dawn 
of our national history was hardly even a name, illu- 
minate the story of French mixed-bloods and should 
always be remembered as a part of our own. But 
to the already long list other names must be added. 

Senator Clapp tells of the metis Bouche, a 
character in the early days of Wisconsin, who had 
much to do with getting settlers there and "making 
things pleasant for them. ' ' Such a part, in the forma- 
tive days of any region, is by no means an insignifi- 
cant one. 

It was in 1837 that the region west of the Missis- 
sippi, which in 1848 was organized as Minnesota Ter- 
ritory, was thrown open to settlement by a treaty with 
the Indians, Gov. Henry Dodge of Wisconsin nego- 
tiating the treaty, Alexis Bailly, J. A. La Framboise 
and A. Roque, all of them French mixed-bloods, be- 
ing interpreters, and the Hon. Joel R. Poinsett, 
Special Commissioner ; other Americans being present. 

[ 132 ] 



French Indians in the Settlement of the West 

As we shall see, Bailly became a member of the Min- 
nesota Legislature, taking office in 1849. 

Whether Alexis Bailly was related to Joseph 
Bailly of Chicago, (supra, p. 105), is not definitely es- 
tablished ; he was certainly connected with the promi- 
nent metis family of Indiana, whose ancestor, Joseph 
Aubert de Gaspe Bailly de Messein of Mackinac 
Island, was a nephew of Bishop Bailly de Messein. 
The nephew, Joseph Bailly of Baillytown, Indiana, 
was a Frenchman of great energy and ability who set- 
tled in the wilderness of sand dunes of Northern 
Indiana, having come thither from Michilimackinac by 
way of Pare aux Vaches, Michigan Territory, in 1820, 
when this region was still a part of Indian Territory. 
His wife, Marie Le Fevre, was a metisse widow of the 
Ottawa tribe. This metis family was prominent in 
the early history of Indiana; it became enormously 
wealthy and furnished much romance. One of the 
daughters, Rose Victoire, in 1841 married Francis 
Howe of Puritan descent, whose father, General Heze- 
kiah Howe, served in the War of 1812. Frances R. 
Howe, a daughter of "the beautiful Rose Bailly 
Howe, ' ' wrote a book which throws an interesting light 
on the early history of Indiana — ''An Old French 
Homestead in the Northwest," in which her metisse 
grandmother, Marie Le Fevre, figures prominently. 

Among those present at the treaty of 1837 was 
Jean Baptiste Faribault, whose father, born in Paris, 
had come to Canada in 1754 as Secretary of the Mar- 
quis Du Quesne's army (Tanguay). The son, Jean 

[133] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

Baptiste, had come to this region in 1820, bringing 
Leavenworth's horses. He had been in the service 
of the Northwest Company and had married a Sioux 
metisse, Pelagic Kinney.' She became the mother 
of Alexander Faribault, founder and principal land 
owner of the city of that name, and builder of the 
first Roman Catholic chapel in Minnesota. For more 
than sixty years Jean Baptiste Faribault, whose in- 
fluence over the Indians was very great, had a large 
part in the settlement and civilization of the North- 
west. His mixed-blood sons and grandsons, especially 
David and George, continued that influence. 

With Louis Provencalle, Faribault was identified 
with every movement of trade in the Territory. Pro- 
vencalle, who was a metis and a man of great good 
sense, knew many Indian dialects, and invented a sys- 
tem of picture writing for his accounts with the In- 
dians with whom he traded. 

Among otlier metis settlers of early Minnesota 
was Oliver Rousseau, who lived in St. Paul when the 
Territory was organized; the son probably, of one 
of ' ' two fur traders by name of Rousseau, ' ' who lived 
there in 1823. The name is found with many variants 
in Canada. 

Joseph Ronde, a French trader, who married the 
Kootenais metisse Josephine Beaulieu, or Boileau, a 
name widely known among French mixed-bloods, 
early settled in the Territory. The sister or niece 
"of Josephine Boileau, Elizabeth Beaulieu or Boileau, 

^ "La dite P^lagie Kinney est la fille de Francois Kinney par une 
femme de notre nation", runs a treaty. 

ri34] 



French Indians in the Settlement of the West 

married a Danish gentleman, Dr. Charles W. Borup, 
who came to Minnesota as general manager of the 
American Fur Company. Of their several children, 
one daughter married an officer in the United States 
Army, another, an officer in the Navy. Two sons 
were long prominent in railroad business, a third. 
Col. Dana Borup, IT. S. A., retired, was for a time 
in charge of the harbor of New York. With Mr. 
Charles H. Oakes of Vermont, who married another 
Boileau sister. Dr. Borup in 1853 established in St. 
Paul the first banking house in Minnesota, which 
weathered all the financial storms that swept over 
the Territory in its early history. 

Among many French mixed-bloods who ren- 
dered valuable service in the early settlement of the 
Dakota Territory stands pre-eminent the French- 
Sioux, Charles F. Picotte, son of Honore Picotte and 
a Dakota (Sioux) girl. Honore Picotte, his brother 
Joseph and nephew Henry, were French traders with 
the Columbia Company on the upper Mississippi in 
1820, Honore becoming the leading partner in the 
great company. He was one of the party of govern- 
ment road-makers that aided greatly in the develop- 
ment of Dakota. Very venturesome, and trusted by 
the generally hostile Sioux, he could go where he 
would among them without a military escort. His 
metis son Charles, born at Fort Tecumseh about 1823, 
was educated in St. Louis, but went back and married 
first a woman of his mother's band, and after her 
death a Yankton Sioux, living with her tribe. Charles 
F. Picotte was greatly useful to General Harney in 
[135] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

1855-56, and was made third Chief of the Yanktons. 
He was with Captain Todd in the winter of 1857-8, 
and it was he who induced fifteen Yankton head men 
to accompany him to "Washington, where in April, 

1858, a treaty was effected by which the Yankton 
Sioux relinquished all the Dakota territory except the 
Yankton Reservation, to which the tribe removed in 

1859. It is interesting to note, as an illustration of 
the degree of education attained by these remote In- 
dians at that relatively early time, that twelve of 
these fifteen signed their names to this treaty, Picotte 
signing for the other three. 

Picotte 's influence over the Indians was great, 
and in all their treaties he carefully safeguarded their 
interests. ''Loyal to both races, his career was an 
honorable one," says Mr. Doane Robinson, the his- 
torian of South Dakota. He describes Charles S. 
Picotte (S. Dak. I., p, 113, n. 3), as a well educated, 
influential mixed-blood, "the best and most favorably 
known on the Dakota frontier, ' ' and an especially use- 
ful citizen in the organization of the Territory. 

On the other hand, the Indians were not unmind- 
ful of their debt to him. By the express stipulation 
of their headmen the treaty included a clause by which 
"on account of the valuable services and liberality to 
the Yanktons" there was granted to Picotte one sec- 
tion of land ; the old metis guide. Zephyr Rencontre, 
also receiving a gift of land. On Picotte 's reserva- 
tion now stands the city of Yankton, of which young 
capital he was ' ' a leading and public-spirited citizen. 
With his partner, Moses K. Armstrong, he built the 
[ 136 ] 



French Indians in the Settlement of the West 

first Territorial Capitol, still acting on many im- 
portant occasions as guide and interpreter, and coun- 
cillor between the French (who to a considerable ex- 
tent settled Dakota Territory) and the Indians. ''Too 
generous to succeed in business, ' ' says his biographer, 
''Picotte eventually lost his Yankton property." He 
died a few years ago, among his people on the Yank- 
ton Reservation. 

The widow of Charles Picotte married a French- 
man (possibly a metis) by the name of Galpin, and 
is remembered as having rescued many whites at the 
time of an Indian raid. One of Picotte 's grand- 
daughters is now teaching in Bismark, Minn., and 
has been of assistance to the artist, Edwin Willard 
Deming, well known for his paintings of Indian sub- 
jects, by lending him photographs. 

Father De Smet, who was agent of the Dakota 
Superintendency in 1867, had for interpreters, and 
descants upon their "amazing influence," the son of 
that ''old Zephyr Eencontre" whom we saw receiving 
a reservation with Charles Picotte, and Joseph 
Picotte, one of the large family of which Charles was 
the most prominent member. 

The importance of French mixed-bloods as a 
means of civilizing the Indians appears to have been 
recognized in the early land policy of our govern- 
ment. It was not many years after the war of 1812 
that Congress enacted a measure providing that such 
mixed-bloods as so chose might renounce their in- 
terest in tribal lands and receive a patent for a sec- 
tion, to be chosen by themselves or their guardians. 
[137] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

Not a large proportion at that time accepted the offer. 
Still, the method was not abandoned. President 
Monroe's Treaty of Chicago (1821) explicitly recog- 
nized as Indians, and as we have seen allotted land, — ■ 
among a large number of others — to such well known 
and well educated French mixed-bloods as Charles 
and Medard Beaubien, sons of Jean Baptiste Beau- 
bien of Chicago and Man-a-be-no-quan. A few Eng- 
lish names appear — the well known Burnetts, for 
example, but the great majority are French. 

The name Knaggs, which appears in this treaty, 
sounds anything but French, and it was in fact 
brought to this country by a Dutch-Englishman who 
was among the early settlers of Detroit. His chil- 
dren and children's children, however, for the most 
part married into the French families who were con- 
spicuous in the early history of that city, and the 
family became to all intents and purposes French. 
Nearly a hundred years after Detroit became an 
American city, during the awful scourge of cholera 
that nearly devastated it in 1834, "the beautiful 
Knaggs girls," then far more French than English, 
earned for themselves a noble name by standing by 
Father Kundig as nurses, saving many a life. Though 
the recently published history of the Knaggs family 
("The Knaggs family of Detroit," by Clarence W. 
Burton, Robert Ross, Publisher, Detroit), makes no 
mention of any Indian alliance, we know from other 
sources that there were very close relations between 
this family and the Indians of the region. Whitmore 

[138] 



French Indians in the Settlement of the West 

Knaggs, son of the original settler, George, was an 
adopted Ottawa; the tribe gave him land on the 
Maumee near the present site of Toledo, and some 
of his descendants live there still. 

This "Whitmore Knaggs, the "Brother Knaggs" 
of the Ottawas, who was Indian agent for the British 
government in 1781, and had interpreted for Sir Wil- 
liam Johnson and for Bradstreet in 1759, received 
lands with his son under the treaty of 1821, with, 
among others, Charles and Medard Beaubieii of Chi- 
cago. The younger Knaggs, William by name, be- 
came a leading merchant in Toledo, was elected chief 
by the Ottawas, and had much to do with the peace 
of the region. A cousin of his, another grandson of 
the original settler, married a Huron-Potawatomie, 
and his son received land under the treaty of 1826. 
All these Knaggses were well educated and spoke 
French fluently. 

Though few of the French of Detroit took Indian 
wives, yet not only these members of the Knaggs 
family, but the Frenchman who was undoubtedly 
descended from that Robert Navarre who was one of 
the first settlers of Detroit, and who traced his de- 
scent from Anthony of Bourbon, father of Henry IV 
(of Navarre), King of France, must also be counted 
as an exception. In 1737 we find Potawatomies deed- 
ing their village (within the limits of Detroit) to 
''Robische" Navarre, the name evidently being an 
Indian corruption of Robert. By a treaty of 1833 
the children of Pierre Navarre, the well known scout, 
who in 1821 had been trading at St. Joseph's and in 
[139] 



Our Deht to the Red Man 

the region around Kankaki, were awarded lands as 
mixed-bloods. 

The Navarre family, whether of pure French or 
of mixed lineage, was intensely loyal. Thirty -six of 
the name served in the war of 1812, and two sons of 
Pierre were in the regular army of the United States 
in 1874. This Pierre was General Harrison's scout 
in the Ohio Valley campaign, and ''was among those 
who killed Tecumseh," says the authority already 
quoted. The family seems always to have been in 
kindly relations with the Indians. In 1833 General 
Cass paid to J. M. Navarre of Detroit $20 ''for board- 
ing ten Wyandot (Huron) chiefs while on a visit to 
Detroit." 

Mixed-bloods of this character were quite awake 
to the advantage of having land of their own. We 
find thirty-eight Sauk and Fox metis claiming htnd 
under the treaty of Washington (1825), and thirty- 
one at another time ; among them Maurice Blondeau, 
a w<'ll known name, with fourteen others whose claim 
to French blood was considered doubtful. The Miami 
metis on the Wabash also secured lands. Among 
these were the Godefroys, descendants of two Gode- 
froi children, sons probably of the well born Godefroi 
de Linctot of Quebec, later a trader of considerable 
importance at Prairie du Chien, who during Clarke's 
campaign espoused the American cause and led a 
company of four hundred metis to his aid. His 
sons, having been captured during the disturbances 
of the time, were adopted into tlie Miami tribe, and 
Gabriel, whom in 1818 we find sub-agent at Peoria, 
[140] 



French Indians in the Settlement of the West 

had become a hereditary chief of the tribe, his son 
Pierre succeeding him in the office. These two metis 
are named among ''the last of the barons" by Mr. 
R. R. Elliot in the passage already quoted. Mr. H. H. 
Hurlbut in ''Ohio Antiquities" writes of Col. Gabriel 
Godefroi, "in 1881 an aged but vigorous French gen- 
tleman," who was Indian agent and interpreter in 
President Monroe's treaty with Ottawa, Chippewa 
and Potawatomie Indians in 1821. Many Godefrois 
appear in Tanguay's monumental "Dictionary," 
though without mention of the two captive children. 
The name is now spelled Godfrey in Indiana. 

Among other metis who received lands under 
these treaties, George Cicotte received three and a 
half sections, a certain Lassade two, Maw-ta-no, the 
daughter of Joseph La Framboise, son of Shaw-we- 
no-qua-qua, received a section. This was in accord- 
ance with an intelligent and well matured policy, ably 
stated by Governor Lewis Cass in a letter to the Hon. 
James Buchanan, Secretary of War (1826 A. S. P. 
Ind. Aff. 2. 632) : "It is our firm conviction that 
upon the immediate fate of these persons (the French 
mixed-bloods of the Lake Superior region) depends 
the issue of all the experiments upon this subject 
(the moral elevation of the Indian) which we are 
making in this quarter;" and again (Ibid., p. 683), 
"This principle, of making grants to half-breeds, is 
fully realized in all the treaties recently formed in 
this quarter," citing those of 1817, 1818, 1819, 1824. 
Treaties recognizing the importance of stimulating 
the metis to exertion by giving them land are fre- 
[141] 



Our Debt to the Eed Man 

quent. The Chippewas especially were to receive each 
640 acres on islands in or on the shore of St. Mary's 
River. 

It is easy to see that such liberality, unless care- 
fully supervised, might lead to abuses. Many are the 
cases of unprincipled Americans marrying women 
thus endowed and defrauding them of their lands. 
It is therefore not surprising to find in the report 
of the Census of 1900 the opinion of the Assistant 
Attorney General that the child of an Indian mother 
follows the status of the father, the Indian wife and 
children of a white man not being entitled to an 
allotment. The question had not been decided till 
1896, and was not retroactive, but for the purposes 
of this study the matter is not of importance, as there 
has been no new French blood as late as this. 

Notwithstanding some abuses, the influence of 
the French mixed-bloods in promoting the civiliza- 
tion of the Indians is still recognized. An illustrious 
instance, though it carries us far into the past, is 
found in Joseph Renville, the son of a French fur 
trader of much reputation and a Sioux woman of 
the Kaposia band. He was born at Kaposia, near 
what afterward became St. Paul, Minn., in 1779, was 
educated by a Roman Catholic priest in Canada, and 
came into prominence as a guide to Zebulon M. Pike 
in 1797. In the war of 1812 he served the British 
as interpreter of the Sioux with the rank of Captain : 
the good conduct of the Indians at Fort Meigs and 
Fort Stevenson was largely due to his authority. At 
the close of the war he resigned his commission and 
[142] 



French Indians in the Settlement of the West 

gave up his half pay to become an American citizen, 
and with Faribault and Son organized the Columbia 
Fur Company, of which he was the soul. When in 
1918 Lieut. Snelling began to build the "massive 
stone fort" at the junction of the Minnesota and Mis- 
sissippi Rivers (then called Fort St. Anthony), he 
summoned Renville to act as interpreter for the ex- 
pedition to explore the Minnesota River and the Red 
River of the north. Later, Renville established an 
independent business at Lac Qui Parle. While there 
he met the famous missionary, Rev. T. S. William- 
son, M.D., whose son, the Rev. John P. Williamson, 
thus tells the story: 

"Seventy-eight years ago, in October, 1835, I 
was born in a little cabin belonging to Joseph Ren- 
ville, a Sioux and French mixed-blood and a Roman 
Catholic. The use of the cabin was given to my 
father, who was a Presbyterian missionary, on con- 
dition that he would keep a school which Renville's 
children could attend, with others, promising that his 
famih^ would attend the religious services of my 
father. The promise was fulfilled. And within two 
years he had united in the organization of a Presby- 
terian Church, two hundred miles west of any church 
organization in the United States, in which he be- 
came a ruling elder. His family almost became the 
corner stone of the Presbyterian Mission among the 
Dakota (Sioux) Indians.'' 

^ That all Indians when sympathetically approached — the word 
"sympathetically" may be emphasized — are capable of appre- 
hending the truths of the Christian religion appears to be evi- 
dent when Dr. Williamson is able to count among the fruits of 
a long life of devotion to the Indian peoples of the Northwest 
"the gathering of 36 Presbyterian churches still in existence 
among them (1914)." 

[ 143 ] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

''Joseph Renville was the first to sow wheat on 
the high plains of the upper Mississippi, and the first 
to go into cattle and sheep raising on a large scale. 
His hospitality was proverbial," writes Dr. William 
son.^ It may be added that his example and per- 
suasion induced many Dakotas to become farmers. 
Joseph's son Joseph was with Nicollet as interpreter, 
and the year after (1837) he was sent by the Govern- 
ment with Fremont to examine western lands. 

Though the Indian agent had for more than one 
generation an unsavory name, yet every evidence goes 
to show that those among them who had Indian blood 
were and still are a power for good among those en- 
trusted to their care. 

French names which occur all through our early 
State papers as Indian agents or other government 
employees in the then recently acquired west are al- 
most invariably those of French mixed-bloods already 
resident in the region. They were doubtless appointed 
(the office not being of a character to attract the 
politician) partly because these men were more at 
leisure than the American pioneer, chiefly because 
they understood the native language of the region, 
but with little thought of what was in fact their really 
important qualification, familiarity and sympathy 
with the Indian character and standards. Many of 
them bore names that will take a place in history 
when the part in our history taken by this mixed race 
comes to be recognized. 

Michel Brisebois, agent at the metis town, Prairie 

3 Letter to the Author. This distinguished Missionary died while 
these pages were going through the press, in his eighty-hrst year. 

[144] 



French Indians in the Settlement op the West 

du Chien, Charles Jouett on Rock River, Blondeau, 
the agent of the Sauks, who in 1818 was agent at 
Peoria, the city which came into existence after the 
tragic destruction of Mailletstown,* are a few of 
many instances of valuable servants of the interests 
at once of the native people and of the new govern- 
ment. The sub-agent under Blondeau was Gabriel 
Godfrey, whom we have already met (Supra, p. 140). 
In 1804-5 Auguste Brisebois, whose relative Michel 
was an important resident of Prairie du Chien, was 
in charge of the post at Portage la Prairie in the Red 
River country. Such well known names as Langlois, 
Dorain, De Lorme, Duford, continually recur in this 
service. In 1869 Charles La Follette was Indian 
agent at Grande Ronde agency, Oregon, "where the 
Indians are happily advancing in civilization," 
wrote the Indian Commissioner. 



4 Supra, p. 82. 

[145 



XII 
French Indians as Farmers 

WE have seen the French-Indian interpreter 
and trader Michel Cadotte and the Grig- 
non brothers, celebrated in trade, retiring 
to farms in late middle life as the ideal mode of exist- 
ence. We have seen Joseph Renville becoming the 
father of the great wheat industry of our north- 
western uplands. It is generally assumed that the 
Indian does not take kindly to farming, though we 
have found agricultural Indians^ on the site of Mil- 
waukee before the arrival of the white man, and his- 
tory reminds us of our forgotten debt to the agricul- 
tural Indians of New England and Virginia, who not 
only saved our forefathers from starvation, but in- 
ducted them into the mysteries of growing corn and 
tobacco. The reasons for the Indian's antipathy to 
this mode of life at the present time, so far as anti- 
pathy exists, are not far to seek, but whatever may 
be said as to the willingness of Indians to cultivate 
their lands, provided they are given half a chance of 
success, it is evident that on the whole the metis are 
better farmers than the full-bloods, or than mixed- 
bloods of other races." The Menominees, of whom 

1 Such from the earliest time were the Aricara, often of late called, 

from the name of their reservation, Fort Berthold Indians. They 
had early spring rites in which the corn had a prominent place, 
an ear of corn being used as a symbol and called "mother". 

2 A writer in "The Red Man" (Dec. 1914) opines that as a farmer 

he is equal to the white man, if not better. As a cattle raiser ho 
should be eminently useful. 

[146] 



French Indians as Farmers 

Commissioner Oooley reported in 1865 that they have 
'^generally been at peace with the whites," and are 
"an industrious people, notwithstanding their reputa- 
tion of being generally indolent," had largely inter- 
mingled with the French in early days. No doubt 
the French peasant ancestry of many of the metis has 
served them in good stead in this respect, as French 
mixed-bloods, when not distinctly called to other 
avocations, appear to have done well in agriculture. 
The Choctaws, pre-eminently the agriculturalists 
among the southern tribes, married much among 
the French. 

So long ago as 1869 the Indian agent reported 
that the Cherokees (who have much French blood) 
asked permission to build railroads across their lands 
as the only means of keeping possession of them. 
"They have the money, they say, and it is their only 
hope." The Government, however, did not permit. 

Prairie du Chien, which as we have seen was 
originally an Indian, and afterward a metis town 
(Supra, p. 117), at least as early as 1784 sold corn to 
Canadian traders. In 1812 it disposed annually of 
about eighty thousand pounds of flour and great 
quantities of corn meal to traders and Indians. "The 
people would raise more," reported the French sub- 
agent, Nicolas Boilvin, "if there were a suitable de- 
mand." It may be worth while to inquire how far 
the absence of a market accounts today for the 
lethargy of Indian farmers on remote reservations. 

Agent Isaac T. Gibson, reporting for the Osages 
in Indian Territory in 1874, said that all the metis 

[147] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

families had improved farms. As early as 1849 the 
agent, Father Belcourt, reported of the Turtle Moun- 
tain Chippewas tliat the full-bloods were satisfied with 
the reservation, but the mixed-bloods wanted land 
in severalty ; that they had taken such and made many 
improvements, besides building houses. The report 
of these Turtle Mountain Chippewas in 1897 showed 
that the 1,200 metis on the Reservation were cultivat- 
ing 3,3921/2 acres and . 500 of them outside of the 
Reservation 1,750^/2 acres; the full-bloods were cul- 
tivating 37 acres. 

In 1875 Lieutenant-Governor Atclieson reported 
that the Chippewa Indians and metis had broken land 
for cultivation and had cultivated it at White Earth 
and White Oak Point, Minn., manifesting ''surpris- 
ing energy and aptitude for such unwonted effort." 
Today, after forty years, these energetic farmers are 
contending with the United States Government for 
the right to the land that they have been cultivating 
for more than a generation. 

A generation ago Judge Flandreau wrote of the 
metis Vital Guerin and B. Garrow (probably Gar- 
reau) as ''two good quiet farmers." The Rev. J. P. 
Williamson gives as the result of a long experience 
his conviction that "the French mixed-bloods as a 
class are more industrious than any other class of 
mixed-bloods, ' ' and sends a long list of metis in Mon- 
tana, North and South Dakota and Nebraska who 
"have made exemplary success as farmers." The 
late Rev. J. A. Gilfillan, for many years a Protestant 
[ 148 ] 



French Indians as Farmers 

Episcopal missionary, to whom my debt is great/ in 
reply to my question as to successful metis farmers, 
wrote: "Alexander Beaulieu and many others, too 
numerous to mention, on the White Earth Reserva- 
tion and in Becker, Norman and Mahnomen counties, 
Minnesota. ' ' 

These mixed-blood agriculturists have lost none 
of that stamina which James Buchanan, Secretary of 
War, recognized when he said of the mixed-bloods 
scattered through the Lake Superior region (nearly, 
if not quite, all of French descent) ''They form no 
inconsiderable proportion of the physical force of the 
country, and the moral force which they could exert 
is still stronger." 

With all these facts before it, until very lately 
our government has been as little moved by them as 
in 1849, when Captain Pope regretfully reported that 
"the great body of Pembina half-breeds (French) 
still live in lodges, from the uncertain tenure by 
which they hold their lands and the entire want of 
protection and encouragement exhibited by our Gov- 
ernment." "It is folly," wrote to President Benja- 
min Harrison in 1893 the special Commissioners sent 
to look into the condition of certain Indians, deprecat- 

3 To this devoted missionary, to whose long life of service the Ojib- 
ways are deeply indebted, as the Sioux to the missionaries Wil- 
liamson, father and son. Prof. Moorehead pays tribute (op. cit. 
p. 48f). Unhappily for the tribe, his missions were discontinued 
by the United States Government, and the buildings, for erect- 
ing which he had provided the funds, were taken over by it, 
at far less than their actual value (ib.). (N. B. There is a picture 
of these buildings in op. cit. p. 48). After some correspond- 
ence I met this devoted man the year before his death, living in 
a small apartment in New York, cheerful and brave, his whole 
heart absorbed in the welfare of the people to whom he was no 
longer permitted to minister. 

[149] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

iiig the removal of a band of Chippewas, "to expect 
these Indians to make a living where white men who 
have fuU}^ and fairly tried have failed." (Senate 
Doc. 444, p. 22). The time would seem to be a late 
one for such a discovery, but in 1893 these special 
Commissioners were a voice crying in the wilderness. 

It is not to be denied that the Government has 
made many attempts to teach the Indians to farm. 
So long ago as 1805 an agent was sent to teach agri- 
culture to the Sauks, the agent being the metis, Pierre 
Chouteau, descendant of the well-known French fam- 
ily of the name whose history is an integral part of 
that of the city of St. Louis. It is probably a descend- 
ant of this agent, the French mixed-blood Forest 
Chouteau, who is now a prosperous business man of 
Kaw City, Oklahoma. 

All down through the years scattered notices in 
the reports of Indian Commissioners have shown that 
Indians of French ancestry have been recognized as 
the more progressive element. From one Report, for 
instance, w^e learn that nearly all of this class have 
good houses and are self-supporting; from another 
that they are an uplifting influence, living on separate 
farms and building houses, but sorely hampered by 
the refusal of countj^ authorities to recognize them 
as citizens and entitled to any rights as such. We 
learn that among the Flatheads in 1899 many metis 
were becoming well-to-do ("and full-bloods also mak- 
ing some headway," adds the agent), but that some 
of the metis who were taxed paid under protest : "As 
nearly half the people on the reservation are half- 
[150] 



French Indians as Farmers 

breeds (metis) taxation is an important matter. If 
they are taxable (they say) the country should give 
them schools and build and maintain roads and 
bridges on the Reservation." From the same au- 
thority (Am. St. Pap., Indian Affairs), we learn that 
in 1870 the French mixed-bloods among the Yankton 
Sioux (the majority of the whole), whether Chris- 
tion or semi-pagan, were all strictly temperate. In 
1884 this class in Oklahoma (then Indian Territory) 
had good farms and were ' ' pushing hard on the white 
man's road." Among the Osages in 1884 the full- 
bloods were fast passing away, but the mixed-bloods 
(in this tribe, largely French), were steadily increas- 
ing and apparently becoming more ready to adopt 
civilized ways and accept education. 

' ' The Omahas and Winnebagoes in Nebraska have 
been remarkably successful as farmers," writes the 
Rev. J. A. Shine of Plattsmouth, Neb. ; while Potawa- 
tomies in Kansas and several tribes in Minnesota, Wis- 
consin and Michigan, with great numbers of the Sioux 
in South Dakota have proved their ability as tillers 
of the soil. The tribes here mentioned largely inter- 
mingled with the French in early days; but we 
have seen that many Indian tribes were distinctly 
agricultural. 

"Twenty-five years ago," says Mr. Alanson 
Skinner, "the Indian farmers on the Sisseton Reserva- 
tion had the same start as the neighboring whites; 
now they have better houses, barns and stock, with 
trees and gardens up to date. In some cases they 
teach the whites how to farm. Their Government 

[151] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

school of 160 pupils, who are carried through the 
eighth grade, is the only one in the service which 
is entirely supported by Indian money. All the staff 
except the principal, the matron and one teacher, are 
either Sioux or French mixed-bloods." Moses de 
Coteau, who traces his lineage to a member of the 
Chouteau family of St. Louis who traded with the 
Indians and married a Sioux, is at the present day 
a prosperous farmer with a large family. Hazen 
Dumarsh of Dakota, also a metis, is farming a large 
ranch of his own, and is a man of fine education. 
Chauncey Yellowrobe, already mentioned as a ''pros- 
perous young rancher," only a few years out of 
Carlisle school, is already a man of influence among 
Indians and is now (1918) actively cooperating with 
the Indian Rights Association and the Society of 
American Indians in the effort to take immediate 
steps for the gradual abolition of the Indian Bureau. 



[152] 



XIII 
The Metis as an Industrial Worker 

NO argument, however, should be needed to 
prove that an Indian is not more necessarily 
a successful farmer than a Yankee or a 
Hoosier; surely the most superficial observation 
should long ago have taught us better. As early as 
1879 Mr. Vincent Hazard had found in the metis at 
least '^a great capacity for work and industry exer- 
cised over a wide range from the highest to the 
lowest. ' ' He refers to well-known instances of many 
who in Michigan and Wisconsin "hold positions of 
trust and responsibility and live just like their white 
neighbors." "Among them are carpenters, black- 
smiths, shoemakers, boatmen." 

The Rev. Father Derenthal of Reserve, Wis., 
sends a long list of French mixed-bloods of the pres- 
net day who are successful in various occupations: 
carpenters, miners, loggers, harness makers, hotel 
keepers, as well as government employees. From 
other sources we learn of a number who have lately 
become successful engineers and machinists, and it 
may be observed that across the line in Manitoba 
many are holding government offices. 

And yet until the French-Indian, Charles E. 
Dagenett, now Supervisor of Indian Employment,^ 

1 He might well be called "Supervisor of Employment for the In- 
dian Returned Student," since he is chiefly concerned with 
those who have completed their studies at Indian schools, or 
have left them to continue their education elsewhere. (Private 
letter from an officer of the Society of American Indians). 

[153] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

proved the contrary to the satisfaction of the govern- 
ment, those in authority shared the still prevailing 
conviction that the Indian who did not make a good 
living by farming on his reservation was incurably 
idle and worthless. 

This country recognizes its debt to Gen. R. H. 
Pratt, who first showed our Government the way to 
do justice to the Indian by educating him. To Charles 
E. Dagenett, one of General Pratt's most promising 
students at Carlisle, is also due a large measure of 
recognition for the further endeavor to civilize the 
Indian by employing him in those avocations for 
which he is individually best fitted. 

Mr. Dagenett 's great-great-grandfather, Am- 
broise Dagney (the name was probably Dagenet, and 
had doubtless already suffered one of the several muta- 
tions it passed through before reaching its present 
form, always, however, retaining the French pronun- 
ciation, Dagenay), was a native of France and a 
resident of Kaskaskia, who fought in the Tippecanoe 
campaign and was wounded near Prophet's Town. 
Dagney married Me-chin-quam-e-sha (Beautiful 
Shade Tree), sister of a head chief of the Miami, and 
their son, Christmas Dagney, well educated by the 
priests, speaking English and French with great 
fluency, and master of several Indian dialects, effi- 
ciently served the Government many years as inter- 
preter and later as Indian agent at Fort Harrison, old 
Fort Wayne. This region had been the immemorial 
capital of the Miami Indians, but in 1795, at the treaty 
of Greenville, the United States had forced them to 
give up their land in this region. The tribe deterior- 
[154] 




CHARLES E. DAGENETT 

Supervisor of Indian Employment 

French-Miami 



The Metis as an Industrial Worker 

ated greatly after this, and gradually ceded their lands 
in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, receiving others west 
of the Mississippi. Christmas Dagney's son, the 
second Christmas Dagney, married the full-blood 
Brothertown (Mohican) Indian (supra, p. 74 n.), 
Mary Ann Isaacs, a Christian woman of education. She 
was with the early missionary McCoy, whose labors 
had a large part in Christianizing the tribes of the 
Middle West. In 1846 Christmas Dagney the second 
led the last of the Miamis to their western lands, 
dying at Cold Water Grove, Kansas. His only sister, 
Mary, had in 1818 been given a reservation in Dan- 
ville, 111., her father, the first Christmas Dagney, liv- 
ing there with her. As we have already seen, the 
second Christmas Dagney's widow afterward married 
another noted metis, Baptiste Peoria (Supra, p. 75). 
The second Christmas Dagney, also a man of 
education, was the grandfather of Charles E. Dage- 
nett. Like former President Roosevelt, Charles 
Dagenett was an extremely delicate child, his early life 
one long struggle for health. Several times during his 
years at Carlisle he was sent home to die. After 
graduating, he taught in an Indian school to earn 
money to pursue his studies, and afterward entered 
the Indian service, where his career has been a dis- 
tinguished one. Beginning by teaching among the 
Apaches, his great desire was to set them to work. 
After long effort he secured an appropriation for the 
purpose, and since then he has put whole armies of 
Indians into the reclamation service, digging irriga- 
tion ditches, working on roads, bridges and other pub- 

[155] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

lie works. His success has been remarkable, especially 
in clearing up the relations of Indians with the Gov- 
ernment and with one another. When three hundred 
Utes of the Uintah Reservation went on the war path 
in 1906 he conferred with Presideiit Taft, with his 
consent put them to work on government roads, and 
thus got them quieted. His work eidarges continually ; 
he has his sub-agents everywhere, being practically at 
the head of a department. (Private letter from a des- 
cendant of the missionary McCoy). At the f)res(^nt 
writing he is arranging for the substitution of In- 
dians for Japanese in certain private fields of labor 
in the South. In his large plans for the Indians 
he examines every section of the country to find how 
best to employ the boys and girls of the Indian schools, 
considering each one as to health, capacity and attain- 
ments. Intensely practical, not in the least senti- 
mental, he is deeply sympathetic with his Indian 
brethren. His '^ Circular of Instruction to Superin- 
tendent and Other Officers having charge of Indian 
Employees" is a masterpiece of judicious presenta- 
tion of the whole subject, and firm insistance upon 
fair dealing with the thousands of Indians who will 
eventually come under this department.^ 

Already in 1849 Captain Pope saw the usefulness 
of incorporating metis in the militia and Indian 
Police. Writing of the Pembina metis, he says that 

2 ''Eventually all Indians will be citizens, free voters, American 
citizens in fact and in spirit, so that there will be no need for 
a Supea-visor of Indian ICmployment, " writes another cor- 
respondent. Mr. Dagenett's work is contributing effectually to 
this consummation which no one desires more devoutly than he. 

[ 156 ] 



The Metis as an Industrial Worker 

on their marches they carry only pemmican, on which 
they can march farther, with less of baggage and sup- 
ply, than any people he has ever seen. ''A body of 
hardy and gallant men like these would .... be most 
useful in sustaining the official persons of the govern- 
ment who should be charged with administering the 
laws over that part of the country." Commenting on 
this suggestion the late J. B. Bottineau, the lawyer 
of the Pembinas, says, ''they have always been recog- 
nized as the kings of the plains in warfare, and would 
have cleared out the Sioux or driven them much far- 
ther away from the Chippewa country, had they not 
been stopped by their priest." It was, however, that 
same priest. Father Belcourt, who in 1845 wrote, ad- 
vising the Government to make a militia of these metis 
to whom munitions might be furnished in time of 
service ; Mr. Bottineau, quoting this advice, expressed 
his opinion that in that case there would never have 
been any need of sending an army there. This plan 
has been urged by various agents all down the years. 
In 1875 Agent Clum of the San Carlos (Apache) 
Agency reports that he wants no soldiers, "this 
(Indian) militia is better;" and later we find the 
French mixed-blood guide and scout Clay Beaufort 
commander over the Indian police. 

Senator Lane of Oregon, who was possibly mis- 
taken in his conviction that ''try as hard as it will, 
the Government can never make a farmer out of an 
Indian," was probably very near the truth when he 
asserted that "if Government had fitted out the In- 
dians as cavalry, the United States would have the 
finest body of cavalry in the world." 

[157] 



XIV 
The Metis Intelled 

IT is, however, no doubt true, as the Indian, John 
Oskinson, formerly on the editorial staff of Col- 
lier's Weekly, believes, that the educated Indian 
would rather work with his brain than his hands. 
''That has been accounted our misfortune," he adds, 
''I think it will be our salvation." If this be true 
of the full-blood Indian, it is much more true of the 
metis. In fact, the instances which have been given 
of success in the Indian trade, an occupation which 
called into exercise very high mental and also moral 
powers, bears out Mr. Oskinson 's theory. Mr. Oskin- 
son is a Scandinavian mixed-blood who has achieved 
a literary success which under existing circumstances 
must be an indication of the high possibilities of the 
race. 

French mixed-bloods have served the Government 
not only as interpreters and Indian agents, but in 
even more important capacities.^ In 1867 Col. G. P. 
Beauvais was appointed Special Indian Commissioner, 
"because," his commission runs, ''of your thorough 
knowledge of the Indians through long residence 
among them." For a like reason O. H. Lamoureux 
was made Special Agent for stray bands of Winne- 
bagoes and Potowatomies in Wisconsin. The Hon. 
Forbis Le Flore was Superintendent of Public Schools 

^ The Indian Commissioner, Gen. Parker, of the Seneca tribe lias al- 
ready been mentioned. (Supra, pp. 46, 49.) 

[158] 



The Metis Intellect 

in the Choctaw Nation, I. T., reporting that "our own 
people (metis) and even the full bloods, want to edu- 
cate their children in the English language." 

Naturally and properly the Indian Service is 
enlisting in its ranks an ever increasing number of 
educated Indians. We read in the Quarterly Journal 
of American Indians that there are now over 2,200 
of these regularly employed in the Service, ''earnest 
men and w^omen who labor first of all for the welfare 
of their people." To claim French blood for the 
majority of these would be absurd, and even if true, 
impossible of verification. Yet of ten named in the 
article justed quoted from, seven, three men and four 
women, are unquestionably of French descent, and 
it is certain that very many of the whole number are 
proud to acknowledge some strain of French blood, 
however slight. 

A study of the names unquestionably French in 
the "Statistics of Mixed-bloods in the Government 
Employ," recently compiled in the Indian Bureau, 
shows 424 employed in Indian Schools as superin- 
tendents or principals, physicians," disciplinarians, or 
as bakers, seamstresses, laundresses. We find them 
also as chiefs of police, stock directors, timber clerks 
and guards, expert farmers, overseers, clerks, stenog- 
raphers, typists, government sealers, janitors, fire- 
guards, laborers, interpreters, and in construction 
work as engineers and assistants. These by no means 
exhaust the number of those having French blood, as 

2 See Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte, infra, p. 174, 

[159] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

such ancestry is often hidden behind names farthest 
removed from French. 

We find French mixed-bloods in various other 
branches of Government service. A recent issue of 
the Carlisle Arrow shows only three French names 
in a list of fifty Indians entering the Department by 
civil service examination in 1912, but many of the 
others without doubt had French blood. These men 
and worsen were to draw salaries ranging from three 
hundred to twelve hundred and fifty dollars. Many 
French mixed-bloods are employed in the Indian 
Bureau, Washington, nearly all of them being grad- 
uates of Carlisle; among others are the sister of the 
Honorable Gabe Parker, recently Registrar of the 
Treasury, and an extremely intelligent sister and 
brother whose French blood, manifest in both face 
and manner, is hidden behind the name Brewer. Miss 
Brewer, a charming speaker, won many enconiums 
from Associate members of the Society of American 
Indians by her address on the aims and purposes of 
the Society at its second annual meeting in Denver. 

The office of Indian Judge has always been highly 
prized by intelligent Indians, and in the early days 
was usually held by French mixed-bloods. Michel 
Brisebois of Prairie du Chien, son-in-law of Lan- 
glade's nephew, Gauthier de Vierville (supra, p. 64), 
of a notable family of guides and scouts, was made 
a judge by Governor Lewis Cass. He died in 1839. 
In 1882 the office was reorganized, to be held for one 
year without pay, but a change must since have been 
made, since the recent report of the Indian Bureau 

[160] 



The Metis Intellect , 

shows forty-seven French names of Judges in Indian 
courts at salaries of from eighty-four to one hundred 
and twenty-four dollars (per month?). It is in- 
teresting to find among Indian Judges Sa Batise (St. 
Baptist) Perrote, who traces his ancestry to the 
famous voyageur, trader, annalist and representative 
of the French King in taking possession of the North- 
west in 1670. The present Perrot (who pronounces 
the last consonant of his name) is not only a judge of 
the Indian court and a very intelligent man of solid 
reputation, but a priest of the Sioux Medecine Society, 
though reverent toward other religions. He is also 
a prosperous farmer. 

It is Mr. Hazard's opinion that in intellect the 
metis holds the middle ground between the races, yet 
the comparatively large number of French mixed- 
bloods who have become teachers in Indian schools, 
ministers and priests, with services in translating the 
Bible into various Indian tongues and other literary 
and scientific work to their credit, at least show what 
the Indian at his best may be. In Oklahoma, where 
the proportion of mixed-bloods of all races is very 
great, a larger number of tribes than elsewhere are 
represented by metis, both in business and in pro- 
fessional life. Many of these rank with the best citi- 
zens, men of unquestioned integrity, and active in 
every movement for race betterment. 

A considerable number of French mixed-bloods 

have entered political life. Here and there through 

the west we find them holding local offices, like John 

Lecy, Postmaster at White Earth, Minn., but their 

[161] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

share in our national life is much more important 
than this. 

Representative Charles D. Carter of Oklahoma, a 
dark-hairecl, brown-eyed French' mixed-blood and a 
most loyal Indian, who is constantly working for the 
betterment of the race, lately pointed out that Okla- 
homa is solving the Indian problem in its own way, 
since with a population only one-tenth Indian, that 
race is now represented by the Governor, Lieutenant- 
Governor, one senator, one representative and several 
other government officials. The services of such in 
this capacity, however, date from a long past. We 
have seen "the gentlemanly" Lapence as Senator in 
a newly organized Territory more than a hundred 
years ago. A metis by name of Compos was at one 
time candidate for the governorship of Michigan 
Territory. Truman Warren, son of the three-fourths 
Indian, Mary Cadotte, was at twenty-six years of age 
a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives. 
A man of charming manners, of unblemished char- 
acter and greatly beloved, he died, unhappily for his 
State, in 1835, at the early age of twenty-six. Alexis 
Bailly, who was a relative of the Chicago trader of 
earlier days, possibly descended from Joseph Bailly 's 
second wife of story-telling fame,'' was a member of 
the Illinois legislature ; the Pembina metis, ' ' Young 
Joe" Rolette, was a member of the Minnesota legis- 
lature from 1852 till 1855, a member of the Council 
in 1856 and 1857, and of the Constitutional Conveii- 
tion in December of the latter year. That constitu- 
tion excluded Pembina from the State, but he brought 

•■* And certainly of the Bailly de Messein family, supra, p. 133. 

[ 1G2 ] 




HON. GABE E. PAEKER 

Superintendeut of the Five Oivilized Tribes 

Former Registrar of the U. S. Treasury 

French -Ohoctaw 



The Metis Intellect 

his credentials "as usual" and was admitted as a 
"time honored institution." Mrs. Baird, who was 
the god-daughter and sister-in-law of Rolette's father, 
the lover of Horace, says that ' ' Young Joe ' ' could not 
read or write, and this is not impossible, in considera- 
tion of the educational facilities — or their lack — in 
upper Minnesota at that period; though Mrs. Baird 
may possibly have been mistaken. He was at all 
events endowed with a high sense of honor as well as 
with wonderful strength. 

State Senator Forbis Le Flore of Mississippi — 
no doubt a descendant of a long line of Le Flores in 
Canadian history — whom we saw in 1869 Superin- 
tendent of Public Schools of the Choctaw nation, 
earned an honorable name by inducing his (Choctaw) 
tribe to move peaceably from Mississippi to the In- 
dian Territory. The Senator, however, retained his 
own plantation in the delta of his native State, where 
his daughter was living in 1905, and perhaps is so to 
this day. Of the same family is Captain Charles Le 
Flore of Limestone Gap, Okla., father-in-law of 
Governor Lee Cruce, of that State, also of French In- 
dian descent. Senator La Follette has Indian as well 
as French blood in his veins. The Hon. Gabe Parker, 
"one of the brightest of our educated Indians" (W. 
K. Moorehead, op. cit. Int.) until recently Registrar 
of the Treasury of the United States, is a Choctaw In- 
dian of both French and Anglo-Saxon ancestry. Mr. 
Gabe Parker is an ardent temperance advocate, and 
has taken a conspicuous part in all movements for the 
development of the American Indian. As teacher in 

[163] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

Indian schools and then Superintendent of the Arm- 
strong School for Choctaw boys in Oklahoma, he had 
been twelve ^ears in the Indian service before he was 
called to the office of Registrar of the Treasury. The 
need of the government for a specially equipped man 
for one of the most important positions in the Indian 
service cut short, however, his tenure of that office. 
He is now Superintendent of the Five Civilized 
Tribes, in Oklahoma, a position not only of great res- 
X)onsibility, but commanding a much larger salary 
than the treasury office. Selected because of ''pre- 
eminent qualification for the position and superior 
equipment," his api3ointment is of happy augury for 
a group of people who have suffered much, and who 
now see the dawn of better days. 

Few women of auy race have been called to re- 
sponsible positions in the service of the national gov- 
ernment, and Mrs. Rosa Bourassa La Flesche is no 
doubt the only Indian woman to whom has been in- 
trusted the responsible task of Indian land agent, her 
station being the Rosebud Agency, S. D. Mrs. La 
Flesche 's grandfather, Mark D. Bourassa, one of a 
large family of boys, came to the United States from 
Canada, his father having originally come from 
France. Since the wife of Charles de Langlade, 
Charlotte Bourassa, there have been several persons 
of the name of excellent standing, all tracing their 
relationship back to the French great-grandfather, 
and all, so far as can be ascertained, having Indian 
blood. Rosa Bourassa 's father, a French-Chippewa, 
[164] 




MRS. ROSA BOURASSA LA FLESCHE 

Indian Land Agent. A Founder of the Society of American Indians 

French-Chippewa 

See p. 205 



The Metis Intellect 

a man of standing in Michigan, served in the army 
during the Civil War. He gave his daughter the 
best available educational opportunities, and her cul- 
ture is of a high order, but her intellectual gifts are 
eclipsed by the noble qualities of her heart. She is 
the wife of Francis La Flesche, but devotion to the 
weal of the Indian is the mainspring of her life. 
Her, self-denying services to this cause are past 
enumerating. 



[165] 



XV 

The French- Indian in the Learned 
Professions 

IT was natural that French mixed-bloods should 
sooner or later embrace the calling of the sacred 
ministry, especially of the Roman Catholic 
church, which was that of their ancestors. The 
number of those who have done so is too great for 
detailed notice, but three names at least must find 
mention here. 

The French blood of the Rev. Father Philip B. 
Gordon, head of the Roman Catholic Indian Office in 
Washington, a quarter-breed French-Indian, to 
whom my warm thanks are due, is lost to sight in the 
corruption of a name originally Gaudin. The Rev. 
E. C. Chirouse was for many years priest and teacher 
on the Tulalip Reservation, Washington Territory. 
Of him the Superintendent of Indian Affairs re- 
ported in 1868, ''he is doing a great work," and 
again in 1869, "In the hands of Father Chirouse 
every dollar will be faithfully spent." The Rev. 
James Buchard, S. J., of St. Ignatius Church and 
College, San Francisco, Cal., whose life, says his bi- 
ographer, ''had all the elements of a romance," was 
the son of Kestalwa, Chief of the Lenni-Lenape, so 
well known to readers of Cooper, and Elizabeth 
Bucheur, daughter of French emigrants from Au- 
[166] 



The French-Indian in the Learned Professions 

vergne. The latter having been massacred by 
Comanches, the child was adopted by the Lenni- 
Lenape, and ultimately became the wife of the chief 
of the tribe. Watonika, or Swift-foot, the future 
priest, a younger son of this marriage, born in 1823 
at Muscogee, I. T., showed from infancy a remark- 
ably religious spirit. His father having been slain 
by the Sioux, he was sent by a Presbyterian mission- 
ary to Marietta College, 0., and in due time became 
a minister, taking a temporary charge in St. Louis. 
While there he adopted the Roman Catholic faith, 
entered the Jesuit Order, was ordained priest in 1856, 
and soon after went westward and devoted himself 
"to seeking the stray sheep in mountain town and 
mining camp", leaving "missions in large cities to 
others." In 1861, however, he reached San Fran- 
cisco, took up church work, and by his eloquence 
drew large crowds. That autumn he founded a So- 
dality of the Virgin Mary, which was joined by many 
leading men, lawyers, bankers and merchants, with 
a large number of artisans and laborers. The first 
"Mission" and "Retreat" ever held in that city was 
held by him that winter. The next year a large 
church was built for him and was always more than 
well attended. His labors were occasionally inter- 
rupted by journeys to Oregon and the Northwest, 
where his Missions were greatly blest. On return- 
ing from one of these he was attacked with serious 
illness and died of heart failure, Dec. 27, 1889.^ It 

1 "The First Half century of St. Ignatius Church and College", 
J. W. Riordan S. J. 1905. 

[ 167 ] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

would be hard to overestimate the value of labors 
such as his in the early days of such a settlement as 
that of California. 

Among Indian ministers and priests the majority, 
though not all, have French blood. A few of the 
more prominent metis ministers are the Revs. John 
B., Isaac and Daniel Renville, Louis D. Coteau (who 
was a farmer and a merchant before becoming a min- 
ister), Pierre La Pointe, Samuel Rouillard, Charles R. 
Crawford (French through his mother), A. A. Coe, 
Henry Blackford, Louis Bruce of the Onondaga Res- 
ervation, N. Y., in the Presbyterian Church ; John Ren- 
ville, John Roundell, Philip Deloria, S. A. Brigham, 
Charles T. Wright in the Episcopal, F. H. Paquette 
and Frank Wright in the Methodist Churches. A con- 
siderable number of these were teachers before being 
ordained. 

Hundreds of French mixed-bloods have taught in 
Indian and mission schools. In the very early days 
it was not an unheard-of thing that the children of 
white neighbors should be taught by such. Mary 
Cadotte, the metisse mother of Truman and Lyman 
Warren, before her marriage taught English at Red 
Lake, Wis. Angelique Adhemar, sister-in-law of Mme. 
Alexis La Framboise, opened a school at Michilimacki- 
nac, at which all the girls of the post were educated 
until the death of La Framboise, when the widow and 
her children removed to Montreal. The metisse 
mother of Mrs. Baird of Green Bay opened the first 
girls' boarding school in the Northwest, (supra, p. 
[168] 




MRS. EMIL.Y P. KOBITAILLE 

Teacher in Carlisle Indian School 

French-Chipiiewa 



The French-Indian in the Learned Professions 

67), teaching reading, writing, sewing and gen- 
eral housekeeping. Charles Henry Beaubien, 
metis son of ' ' the first citizen of Chicago, ' ' a graduate 
of Princeton College, in 1829 elected to teach school 
in that village when his younger brother, Medard, 
went into business. He was possibly the first teacher 
in Chicago. He died young, however, at the age of 
twenty-six. Alexis Grignon was a teacher among 
the Menominee in 1874. The rank and file of French 
mixed-bloods of the present day who attend Carlisle 
or other Indian superior schools, especially women, 
go into teaching, most of them holding subordinate 
positions in Reservation Schools, though a few are 
matrons or even superintendents. Some are teach- 
ing in public and private schools. Miss Ella De- 
loria, who bears a name honored in the missions of 
the Episcopal Church, has recently graduated from 
Teachers College, Columbia University. 

The profession of the law appears to attract 
many educated French-Indians, the cast of whose 
minds seems peculiarly adapted for grappling with 
legal subtleties. Among the earliest to distinguish 
himself in this profession was Jean Baptiste Botti- 
neau of Ossia, Minn. — Ozawidjeed — ^'le petit avocat 
du Pere Malo/' the devoted champion of the Turtle 
Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. Son of the 
noted guide and military scout, Pierre Bottineau 
(supra, pp. 127, 128), and Genevieve La Ranee, he was 
born in Dakota Territory in 1837 and died at his 
home in Washington, December 1, 1911. His early 
[ 169 ] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

life was spent at St. Anthony's Falls, where we have 
already seen his father exercising a refined hospitali- 
ty. There Jean Baptiste studied and practised law, 
and for a number of years held the office of Justice 
of the peace. In 1862 he married Marie, daughter 
of Frangois and Marguerite (Dumas) Eenville. He 
was a man of great force of character, highly intel- 
lectual and broadly humanitarian, generous to a fault, 
delighting to aid the oppressed and afflicted. 

The practice of law was not by itself sufficient 
to absorb J. B. Bottineau's exuberant energy. He 
also held the offices of United States and State tim- 
ber agent, and was highly successful in the real es- 
tate business and in the fur trade, his uncle, Charles 
Bottineau (Little Shell or Petite Coquille) being his 
partner in trade in the Red River country. Events 
at the close of the Civil War and the decline of the 
fur trade brought upon the firm a loss of $80,000, 
yet without impoverishing Mr. Bottineau. Later he 
devoted the bulk of his large fortune to the interests 
of his tribe, for whose sake and to prosecute whose 
claim against the Government he went to reside in 
Washington, where he lived twenty years and spent 
many thousands of dollars. The valuable pamphlet 
which, in behalf of these Chippewas, he drew up and 
submitted to the Fifty-sixth Congress, June 6, 1900, 
(Senate Document 444), is a mine of historical and 
documentary evidence, his argument for the right 
of these mixed-blood Indians to their land being sup- 
ported by extracts from such travellers as Zebulon 
[ 170 ] 



The French-Indian in the Learned Professions 

M. Pike, Alexander Ramsay, Alexander Henry, and 
such Indian agents as Father Belcourt and many 
others, and by reports of Commissioners sent by 
Government at various times to investigate the sub- 
ject. His eloquent argument for the rights of a 
tribe to which the government of this country is 
deeply indebted should, it would seem, convince 
every disinterested hearer. Yet he died with the 
question still undecided, and five years later (1918) 
''The Turtle Mountain affairs are still pending," to 
the shame of Congress. 

J. B. Bottineau was a man of fair culture, hav- 
ing in early life read much, especially along the lines 
of liberal thought and mysticism. He was a strong 
and consistent advocate of Indian education, indus- 
trial, technical, professional and moral, and a vig- 
orous supporter of the government policy of main- 
taining such schools as that as Carlisle. He lived and 
died a Roman Catholic.^ 

It may properly be here observed that the loyalty 
of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewas in North 
Dakota, to whose interests J. B. Bottineau gave such 
devoted service, is proverbial. The Band is largely 
composed of French mixed-bloods, who have been of 
great assistance to the Government in its conflicts 
with hostiles, and notably in protecting its interests 
against Canadian smugglers. Of 261 signers of the 
treaty of 1892, by which this band ceded to the 

^ The facts hei'e narrated are drawn from an obituary notice written 
by Prof. J. N. B. Hewitt. 

[171] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

United States all rights in their lands except the 
Turtle Mountain Reservation, 166 names aire clearly 
French, and undoubtedly the majority of the others 
have more or less French blood. And it is this, their 
last refuge, which their ''paternal" government is 
now disputing with them ! 

Among successful lawyers of the present day is 
former United States Senator Charles Curtis of Kan- 
sas, who is one-eighth Indian and five-eighths French, 
on the maternal side. His grandmother was the 
daughter of Louis Gonville and a daughter of White 
Plume, a Kansas (Sioux) chief, who married a 
Frenchman, Lewis Pappan. Mr. Curtis is practising 
law in Topeka, Kansas. He is a member of the So- 
ciety of American Indians. 

Prominent among French-Indian lawyers is 
Thomas L. Sloan of Bender, Nebraska, a French- 
Omaha whose name was put forward by the tribes 
composing the recently organized Indian Federation, 
and many influential men both east and west, for the 
office of Indian Commissioner, now, however, ably filled 
by the Hon. Cato Sells. Carl Quay-se-good (one of the 
two Chippewa delegates to Mr. Wilson's inauguration, 
the late lawyer, Gus Beaulieu being the other) , studied 
law in the University of Minnesota. Thomas St. Ger- 
main, a graduate of Yale University and a noted 
athlete in his college days, though a lawyer, has re- 
cently gone into the sale of sporting goods, the athlete 
''Chief Bender" being his partner.' Mrs. Marie 
[ 172 ] 




MARIE LOUISE BOTTINEAU BALDWIN, LLM. 
Expert Accountant of the Education Division of the U. S. 
Indian Bureau, Treasurer of the Society of American Indians. 
Frencli-Chippewa 



The French-Indian in the Learned Professions 

Louise Bottineau Baldwin, daughter of the late J. B. 
Bottineau, who has long held a responsible position in 
the Lidian Department (supra, p. 128), was admitted 
to the Bar of the District of Columbia in 1914, having 
performed the notable feat of completing the three 
years' course in the evenings of two years, and gradu- 
ating with the highest distinction. "Side by side 
with men fresh from college she competed for honors. 
Every one knew her as the Indian woman whose wits 
were keen and whose mind was just a little bit more 
capable than the rest. Indian capacity was on trial, 
and Mrs. Baldwin, as a loyal Chippewa, a loyal In- 
dian, finished her course with honor," says the Quar- 
terly Journal of American Indians, ''proudly, but 
none too proudly." Mrs. Baldwin, who is Treasurer 
of the Society of American Indians, has offered her- 
self to the "War Department for service oversea. She 
speaks French as fluently as English, and her skill 
as an accountant will make her valuable to the audit- 
ing staff. 

It is but recently that Indians have entered the 
medical profession, the long course of study required, 
including hospital practice, having deterred many 
from entering this field of usefulness. Yet thcr-^ 
are those who have won respect in this calling. The 
late Peter Wilson, a French-Oneida, a graduate of 
Dartmouth, was "a wonder as physician and sur- 

3 Charles M. Guyon, the metis football player of Carlisle 1905, carries 
on a branch office of the Spalding Company in Atlanta. 

[173] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

geon." Dr. Susan La Flesclie Picotte, government 
physician for the Omahas*, sister of the still remem- 
bered ''Bright-Eyes/' and of the ethnologist Francis 
La Flesche, is honored among women physicians of 
every race. 

Dr. Oscar De Forest Davis, French-Chippewa, 
has become highly successful in the practice of his 
profession. 

A metis Chippewa is at the present writing 
studying medicine in Georgetown Medical College. 
Mr. Dennison Wheelock, D. D. S., prominent in the 
Society of American Indians, is practicing dentistry 
in "West De Pere, Wis. The need of physicians of the 
Indian race was urged by Mr. Chauncey Yellowrobe 
on the occasion to which reference has already been 
made (supra, p. 101). The noted full-blood physi- 
cians, Dr. Charles A. Eastman and Dr. Carlos Mon- 
tezuma, have already been named. 

But though few have heard the call of the medi- 
cal profession, the appeal from the bedside of the 
sick has been answered by many and an ever increas- 
ing number of Indian girls, most if not all of them 
of French blood. The majority of these are gradu- 
ates of Carlisle. The pioneer in this profession is 
probably Miss Estaiene de Peltaquestagne, whom 
General E. H. Pratt characterizes as ''a noble and ef- 
ficient woman, a nurse of such quality as to receive 
a salary of unusual amount." Gen. Pratt especially 

* Dr. Picotte died in the spring of 1916. Her loss seems almost ir- 
reparable. 

[174] 



The Feench-Indian in the Learned Professions 

names Miss Peltaquestagne with Mrs. Rosa Bourassa 
La Flesche as "exceptional characters, indicating 
that mixing French and Indian blood has produced 
fine results." 



[175] 



XVI 
In Literature and Art 

IN the field of literature French mixed-bloods 
make a creditable if small showing. We have 
seen Antoine Le Claire collecting legends and 
traditions of the Sauks and Foxes/ In 1823 Oliver 
Rosseau, or Rossin, a French Chippewa of Detroit, 
collected Indian traditions around the deserted Indian 
village of Andersontown, Indiana, under the direction 
of General Cass. The ''History of the Objibways" 
(Minn. Hist. coll. V, 1850-52) by William Whipple 
Warren, brother of the Hon. Truman Warren, and 
son of Mary Cadotte and Truman Warren, in whose 
veins, says the author of "Unnamed Wisconsin," 
"flows honorable Objibway blood," is "an important 
account impartially written by an Indian" (Monette). 
His brother Truman, whose brilliant career was cut 
short by early death, ^ had collected many myths and 
legends of his mother's tribe. Louis Porlier, a grand- 
son of Judge Jacques Porlier, a benefactor, as we have 
seen, of the Wisconsin Historical Society, contributed 
to its Collections an interesting "Narrative" of the 
early time. Several Viauds and Grignons contri- 
buted Reminiscences to the collections of this Society. 
The historical romance by the one-quarter Ottawa, 
Frances R. Howe, has already been named (p. 133), 

1 Compare supra, p. 91. 

2 Supra, p. 162. 

[176] 



In Literature and Art 

The Rev. Clement H. Beaulieu, a priest of the Protest- 
ant-Episcopal Church, has become Editor-in-chief of 
The Tomahawk, a paper founded and for many years 
edited by his relative the late metis lawyer Gus 
Boileau, 

The Renville Family has contributed not a little 
to literature, if the word may be used in its broadest 
sense. The large part taken by this family in the 
civilization of the North West has already been 
shown. (Supra, pp. 143, 144) . But the most important 
service of Joseph Renville to his own people was the 
aid he rendered to Dr. J. S. Williamson and Dr. S. R. 
Riggs in the translation of the Bible, in which Renville 
dictated the translation of every word into Dakota, 
also helping with the Grammar and Dictionary. He 
further wrote a Dakota catechism. His grand- 
nephew, Victor, son of Gabriel Renville, Chief of 
Scouts, U. S. A., wrote the "Tribal History of the 
Dakotas. ' * 

It is interesting to observe that though few 
French names are found among the heads of business 
organizations in Minnesota at the present day, 
(lumbering perhaps excepted) a considerable propor- 
tion of the members of the Historical Society of the 
State and of the contributors to its annals are French, 
and in view of what we know of the settlement of the 
Territory, a certain number of these probably have 
Indian blood. 

Mrs. Josephine Andre Wood of Oklahoma is at 
work upon a History of the French-Indians and 
[177] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

their ancestors, and also upon a study of the Five 
Civilized Tribes. Her father was the son of Major 
Pierre Andre of Vincennes, w^ho was Paymaster 
to the Indians for many years, and probably mar- 
ried an Indian woman. The son, Pierre M. Andre, 
went to the Indian Territory (like many other 
Frenchmen, says his daughter), in a spirit of adven- 
ture and with the desire to observe Indians running 
their own government and acting as a sovereign na- 
tion in the very heart of the United States. Though, 
like many other Frenchmen, he married an Indian 
woman, he was a thorough Frenchman at heart, and 
named his daughter after the Empress Josephine, 
whom he greatly admired. 

The importance of preserving by writing those 
legends and traditions which until now have been 
held in memory and handed down from generation to 
generation is vividly felt by educated Indians and 
their friends. Such publications as The Bed Man 
and the Quarterly Journal S. A. I. have already in- 
cluded articles which, though some of them are from 
the inexperienced pens of Carlisle students, show what 
treasures will be lost if the movement to preserve them 
does not receive more generous support than it has 
thus far enjoyed. The Potawatomie story which Mr. 
Alanson Skinner relates (Journ. S. A. I., 1; '15) of 
the young man who fell in love with the corpse of a 
beautiful girl and tended it with such devotion that 
the Master of Life was touched, and caused her to 
live again, has the same theme as the legendary episode 

[ 178 ] 



In Literature and Art 

of the young nobleman of India, in the so-called Acts 
of St. Thomas, but is clothed with far more reticence 
and nobility, and with the significance that ''Love is 
ever Lord of Death, ' ' entirely lacking in the Apochry- 
phal writing. 

As might be expected, the most important contri- 
butions of French mixed-bloods to literature, still 
using the word in its largest sense, are in the field of 
archeology and ethnology. Mr. Arthur C. Parker, 
official Archeologist and Member of the Department 
of Education of New York State, the nephew of Gen- 
eral Ely Samuel Parker of General Grant 's staff, is of 
the Seneca Tribe. With a large proportion of Anglo- 
Saxon blood, Mr. Parker through his mother has also 
a slight strain of French. His Seneca name is Ga-wo- 
so-wa-neh (Star-shaft). Like his distinguished uncle 
he is active in efforts to promote the true interests of 
the Indian peoples. To that end he took a prominent 
part in founding, in 1910, the Society of American 
Indians, of which he is now President, as well as the 
editor-in-chief of its Quarterly Journal. 

Mr. Francis La Flesche, one of the Ethnologists 
of the Smithsonian Institution, is especially noted for 
his important collaboration with Miss Alice Fletcher 
in an exhaustive study of the ''The Omaha Tribe," 
though he has also other work in the field of literature 
to his credit. Mr. La Flesche 's family history is in- 
teresting. In the early nineteenth century a French 
trader by name of Joseph La Flesche married a Ponca 
[179] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

girl/ Their son, Joseph Estimaza, or Iron Eye, was 
adopted by the Omaha Chief Big Elk, and was edu- 
cated in St. Louis, but returned to the tribe and set 
himself to make ''a village of make-believe white 
men," in other words to civilize his people. He 
gathered around him the young men's party, whicli 
strongly supported him in opposing drunkcijess and 
other immoralities. Eventually he became the princi- 
pal chief of his tribe. ^ ''La Flesche and his band" 
were the strong sux)port of the mission seliool at tlie 
Omaha Agency in 1868, according to Superintendent 
William Hamilton. 

His son Francis, brought up in the tribe, observ- 
ing all its ritual and rites, which were explained to 
him by his father and the old men of the tribe, early 
determined to perfect himself in English and gather 
the lore of his people. His school education was be- 
gun in the agency school, an interesting picture of 
which is given in his story of "The Middle Five." 
Tji early youth Francis La Flesche accompanied as 
interpreter his gifted sister »Susette, better known as 
Bright Eyes, in her tour through the principal cities 
of the United States, to tell the bitter story of the 
removal of the Poncas. Susette La Flesche 's clear ex- 
position of the case, her eloquent appeals for humanity 
toward her race, her dignity of diction and bearing, 
aroused the interest of thousands who listened to her. 



J The Ponca is one of the five tribes of the Omaha division of the 
Sioux ; their language is the same as that of the other four — 
Omaha, Osage, Kansa or Kavtr, and Wea. 

2 This the Fontanelles stoutly dispute. See supra, p. 70 n. 3. 



[]80] 



In Literature and Art 

(says Miss Alice Fletcher in H. A. I., 2; 166), and re- 
sulted in a largely signed request to Government that 
there should be no more removals of tribes. This re- 
quest, though not invariably efficacious, has wrought 
a marked alleviation of Indian woes from this source/ 

Francis La Flesche's education was subsequently 
continued in the National University in Washington, 
of the Law School of which he is a graduate. He is a 
Fellow of the American Association for the Advance- 
men of Science and a member of the American An- 
thropological Society, has made ethnological collec- 
tions for the University of Berlin, the Peabody Mus- 
eum of American Archeology and Ethnology, and for 
other institutions of learning. He has written much, 
and is especially distinguished for his part in the 
monumental study of The Omaha Tribe, in which, as 
already stated, he collaborated with Miss Alice Flet- 
cher. 

Distinguished among ethnologists of whatever 
race is Professor Hewitt of the Bureau of Ethnology, 
Smithsonian Institution. Professor John Napoleon 
Brinton Hewitt is of mixed French, Scotch-English 
and Tuscarora descent, his father, Dr. David Brain- 
ard Hewitt, being of Scotch-English ancestry and his 
mother, Mrs. Harriet Brinton Hewitt, of French and 
Tuscarora descent. He was born on the Tuscarora 
Reservation in Niagara County, N. Y., was educated 

3 Susette La Flesche in 1881 married Mr. T. H. Tibbals, who had 
organized her lecture tours, and went with him to England and 
Scotland, where she made addresses and wrote until her death 
in 1902. 

[181] 



Cue Debt to the Red Man 

in the public schools and Union College, taking both 
the classical and modern language courses, including 
Spanish. He is familiar with the six dialects of the 
Iroquois in tlie United States and Canada, and is 
probably the only living master of them, the Iroquois 
being in many respects more complex than the Greek. 
Beginning life as a ziewspaper correspondent, followed 
by a short service as principal of a private school for 
young men and married men on the Tuscorora Reser- 
vation, he later acted as amanuensis for the ethnolo- 
gist, Mrs. Ermine Smith, under whom no doubt his 
mind found its true bent, for after a few years in the 
railroad and express business, we tind him in 1886 an 
ethnologist in the Bureau of Ethnology of the Smith 
sonian Institution, a position wliich he still holds. 

Mr. Hewitt has devoted much attention to the Ian 
guages of the North American Indians, especially the 
important Iroquoian and Algonquin linguistic stocks; 
also to those of the Maya of Central America and of 
the Malay-Polynesian and other kindred peoples, 
among which he has established important distinc- 
tions. He has studied with care and sympathy the 
myths, legejids, tales, rituals of these peoples, their 
manners, customs, sociology and mythology. The re- 
sults of these studies and researches are embodied in 
several important monographs, and in more than sev- 
enty-five articles contributed to the Handbook of 
American Indians. He has also reduced to order the 
vocabularies of many Indian tongues, and has put into 
writing over 1500 pages of native texts, embodying 
[182] 



In Literature and Art 

the constitution and structure of the Iroquois League, 
the general and fundamental laws of its, polity, sociol- 
ogy, kinship rights and government, its ceremonials, 
rituals, chants and addresses appropiate to various 
formal occasions. He has gathered material for a 
monograph on festivals, thanksgiving assemblies and 
New Year ceremonies, which will also include the 
rich and expressive music of the Iroquois, their games 
and their medecine and secret societies. The list of 
his unofficial publications on ethnological and anthrop- 
ological subjects is a long one. Mr. Hewitt has re- 
cently been chiefly engaged in editing and annotat- 
ing for publication the Seneca material collected by 
the late Jeremiah Curtin; he has also edited his own 
Seneca texts, supplying them with both free and inter- 
linear translations. From time to time Mr. Hewitt has 
prepared and read papers on various themes before 
the Anthropological Society of Washington, of which 
he is a member and officer. He is a founder of the 
American Anthropological Association, and an active 
member of the Society of American Indians. In 1914 
the Cayuga County Historical Society conferred upon 
him the ' ' Cornplanter Medal for Iroquois Research, ' ' 
an honor to which no other man is more justly en- 
titled.* Mr. Hewitt was lately mentioned in Les 
Droits de L' Homme, the weekly Paris paper founded 
by the son of Father Hyacinthe, (Paul-Hyacinthe 
Loyson), as "one of the best interpreters of the [In- 
dian] race." 

♦Abridged from an article in the "Quarterly Journal S. A. I." by 
Mrs. Marie L. B. Baldwin. 

[183] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

Mrs. Angel De Cora Dietz, teacher of Indian Art 
at Carlisle, comes of a family long celebrated in In- 
dian annals. Early in the eighteenth century (1729) 
a French officer, Sabrevoir De Carrie, married Wa-ho- 
po-e-kan, a daughter of the principal chief of the 
Winnebagoes. Their son Chou-ke-ka, born in 1730, 
was known to the whites as Spoon De Kaury. He be- 
came hereditary chief of the tribe, and was always 
friendly with the whites, even when at war with other 
tribes. With Pierre Paquette, Le Roy and other 
mixed-bloods, ''noble old De Kaury," as Mrs. Kinzie 
calls him, helped to make the history of the Middle 
West by assisting the Government in treaties with the 
Indians. It was principally through his influence 
that the treaty of June 3, 1816 was negotiated, he 
being then long past eighty. He died that same year 
at Portage City. His wife, Flight-of-Geese, was 
daughter of the celebrated Winnebago chief Nawkaw 
(Walking Turtle) . They left six sons and five daugh- 
ters, whose blood runs in several well known metis 
families of Wisconsin and Minnesota — Grignon, 
Ecuyer, Le Roy and others. Their eldest son, Ko-no- 
ka, also called Scha-ship-ka-ka (War Eagle) was 
known in early Chicago as Old De Kaury or Grey- 
headed De Kaury. He was born in 1747, served in the 
British campaign against Sandusky in 1813 (says Mrs. 
Kinzie) signed the treaty of Prairie du Chien on be- 
half of the Winnebagoes in 1825, at Caledonia, the 
largest of the Winnebago villages, containing 100 
lodges. Mrs. Kinzie says that he was believed to be 143 

[184] 




MK«. ANGEL DE COliA DIETZ 

Teacher of Art in Carlisle Indian School 

French-Winnebago 



In Literature and Art 

years old at his death. His son Cha-ge-ka-ka, or Little 
De Kaury, succeeded him as chief, but died within six 
months. He was the idol of the Indians but was very 
rebellious to the plan of government to remove the 
Winnebagoes to Nebraska. His younger brother Hop- 
ne-scha-ka (White Fiend) De Kaury succeeded in the 
chieftainship. ° 

Angel De Cora was the granddaughter of the well 
beloved Little De Kaury or De Cora (Cha-ge-ka-ka). 
She studied art at Smith College and then under How- 
ard Pyle, and had a studio in New York, illustrating 
books and articles on Indian subjects in Harper's 
Magazine and other periodicals, until she was called to 
teach in Carlisle, where she married her colleague in 
the art department, Mr. William Dietz, (Lone Star), 
once famous on the athletic field. She has a remark- 
able gift for adapting Indian ideas and symbols to 
purposes of illustration, and with her husband follows 
out with enthusiasm the plans for the revival of In- 
dian art formed by Mr. Leupp when Commissioner. 
At the National Education Association of 1910, coi'n- 
cidentally with which Carlisle School held a Summer 
Institute at Cleveland, Mrs. Dietz, with the aid of her 
pupils, gave a practical demonstration of Indian rug 
weaving. She is a young woman of charming person- 
ality. The importance of her work is receiving new 

^ It is the general belief that it was a member of this numerous 
family, One^Eyed De Kaury, who took Black Hawk and the 
Prophet prisoners at the Big Dells in 1832, and delivered them 
to G-en. John M. Street, Indian agent at Prairie du Chien. Mr. 
Louis Porlier, however, says (in W. H. C. XV; 442) that Black 
Hawk surrendered not to De Kaury, but to Robert Grignon. 

[185] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

and interesting illustration in the very recent and 
most successful attempt to preserve the fast vanishing 
but remarkable art of the various Indian tribes. Mr. 
Dietz has received a prize for the design of the offi- 
cial medal of the Russian Wolfhound Club of Amer- 
ica, and the Governors of the American Kennel Club 
have decided to adopt it as a standard. 

As yet, small attention has been paid, in Indian 
education, to the possibilities of Indian music as a 
distinctive art form, though this possibility was sug- 
gested, as has been earlier observed, in a very interest- 
ing musical composition offered in 1913 by a member 
of the Carlisle Band, at Commencement. Music is, 
however, a part of the curriculum of this and other In- 
dian schools, several of whose pupils have won scholar- 
ships in leading musical schools, and with some degree 
of proficiency in the technique of the art we may hope 
for some interesting contributions, such as have been 
shadowed forth by Miss Nathalie Curtis in her valu- 
able work already named. A number of French 
mixed-blood girls are qualifying as teachers of music. 
A considerable number of young men are members of 
musical bands in various parts of the country. Miss 
Alberta Bartholomeau, who was educated at Carlisle, 
is teaching music in Sparta, 111. She has organized a 
children's choir and is also church organist. Miss 
Jean Senseney, instructor of vocal music in Wilson 
College, was also educated at Carlisle. The daughter 
of the Rev. Louis de Coteau is teacher of music in the 
Sisseton School. 

[186] 



XVII 
The Present Situation 

HOW many French mixed-bloods there are at 
present in the United States it is impossible 
to say with any exactness. The elaborate 
statistics of the 40,639 mixed-bloods reported by the 
census of 1910 are of little avail to the student of this 
subject, since no attempt was made in that census 
(the first that has distinguished mixed-bloods from 
full bloods) to show the white parentage. In fact, but 
for the influence those living on the reservations exert 
upon their fellow tribesmen, the inquiry is not import- 
tant. The notable services of French mixed-bloods be- 
long to the early history of our country. Still, a cer- 
tain interest does inhere in the influence which this 
class of Indians exerts upon those among whom they 
live, and though the recent census gives no data tend- 
ing to distinguish French from other ancestry, the 
study of history and geography affords more than 
one clue. 

From Mr. Hazard 's Smithsonian Report we learn 
that in Michigan in 1852 there were among the Ojib- 
ways (Chippewas) 5,000 metis, many of them persons 
of good education and high standing. More Anglo- 
Saxon names occur among this tribe than among any 
other, but in many of these cases (as also among the 
French-Sioux with Anglo-Saxon names and among the 

[187] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

tribes of the old Six Nations) French blood can be 
traced through the metisse mother. Mr. Hazard found 
that in 1879 there were in the Northwestern States 
from Michigan to Oregon 20,861 French mixed- 
bloods. Wilkes gave a total of 21,691 French mixed- 
bloods on the Canadian border. Of the 15,000 persons 
of Canadian-French descent in Michigan in 1879, 
probably few except in Detroit were free from Indian 
blood. The Report of the Commissioner of Indian 
Affairs for 1879 says that among the Turtle Mountain 
Indians, Chippewa mixed-bloods (in this case nearly 
all French) are very much in the majority, there be- 
ing 1,700 of the latter to 363 full bloods. He inci- 
dently emphasizes the greater industry and better 
farming intelligence of the mixed-bloods. 

In Nebraska, many of the Omaha and Winnebago 
have French blood. Practically all the inhabitants of 
the ''Half Breed Tract" in that State are metis. Of 
the "five civilized tribes" of Oklahoma (Cherokee, 
Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole) a large 
element is white, some of it Anglo-Saxon, but more 
comes from French traders before the Revolution. 
The Iroquois peoples (who, with the exception of the 
Sauks and Foxes, and in the South at one period the 
Choctaws, were the only Indian adversaries of the 
French), have a large admixture of French and also 
English blood, both from adoption and from marriage 
with captives, so that, as Mr. James Mooney of the 
Bureau of Ethnology remarks, the mother was white 
''more often than supposed." In Oregon, with from 

[ 188 ] 



The Present Situation 

30 to 40 per cent of the Indian population mixed, the 
French element is much less, and in Nevada it is 
practically nothing. In Wisconsin, Montana, and 
Washington, with from 10,000 to 15,000 Indians each, 
the proportion is larger (40 to 60 per cent) in the first, 
smaller (30 to 45 per cent) in the other two. 

In Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and North 
Dakota, where the proportion of mixed-bloods is the 
same as in Maine and New York (45-60 per cent) the 
majority (excluding such recent removals as, for in- 
stance, the Stockbridge Indians), are of French blood. 
In the more recently settled Kansas, where the mixed- 
bloods form between 60 and 75 per cent of the Indian 
population, the proportion of metis, though import- 
ant, is much smaller. In fact it may be roughly stated 
that before 1811 nearly all mixed-bloods in the North- 
West were of French descent, so that it is only in the 
regions since then opened to settlement that Anglo- 
Saxon mixed-blood is found in any considerable pro- 
portion. 

In Oklahoma, where the Indian population is one 
tenth of the whole, the proportion of mixed-bloods is 
large (75 per cent), but the French element is rela- 
tively small, though largely represented in positions 
of public responsibility, (Supra, p. 162), Senator 
Owen, alone of this class of mixed-bloods, has no 
French ancestry. 

In Indiana, Illinois and Missouri, in each of 
which, according to the last census, there are fewer 
than one hundred Indians, there are among the white 
[189] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

population a considerable number, mainly persons of 
good position, who are proud to trace French-Indian 
ancestry. The same is the case in Maine and New 
York, especially in the latter, where, as Mr. Mooney 
tells us (H. A. I.) owing to the century-long enmity of 
the Iroquoian tribes to the French, there was an un- 
usually large proportion of women captives married 
into the tribes. Distinguished instances already noted 
are Mr. J. N. B. Hewitt (Tuscarora) and Mr. Arthur 
C. Parker (Seneca). On the New York Reservations, 
however, where the mixed-bloods are nearly 60 per 
cent, there is little or no French blood. The consider- 
able number of those having French ancestry, like the 
two distinguished gentlemen already mentioned, are 
living among the whites, and in all respects, except in 
loyal and proud allegiance to their Indian ancestry, 
are identified with them. 

In South Dakota, with a mixed-blood population 
of between 15,000 and 20,000, which is 30 per cent of 
the Indian population, there is a considerable num- 
ber of metis, many of them of high respectability, 
many, indeed, as we have seen, having borne no mean 
part in the development of the State. 

In recent years the metis population of the states 
on the Canadian border has been increased by migra- 
tion from the Dominion. Some members of the Boi- 
leau or Beaulieu (metis) family came over to Wiscon- 
sin (then a territory) during the metis uprising of 
1836-7 ; one of them being a member of the party that 
discovered the actual headwaters of the Mississippi. 
[190] 



The Present Situation 

The Bouquet family, whom Senator Clapp mentions as 
being prominent near Cass Lake, Minn., probably 
crossed the border at the same time. The uprising 
under Louis Kiel (1885) was doubtless also instru- 
mental in enriching our metis population by a number 
of men of that race from Western Canada, men whom, 
as we shall later see, Lord Dufferin, better informed 
than some other Canadian authorities, was able to esti- 
mate at a high value. 

The migration of this class from Canada has 
usually been deprecated by our Government, chiefly, 
it is supposed, from motives of mistaken economy, 
though Captain Pope, in a report from which more 
than one quotation has been made, appears to have 
had a clearer vision so long ago as 1849. Reporting 
^f I'om Northern Minnesota that at that time there were 
within the United States 1,000 French half-breeds 
(Pembinas), he adds that across the line there are 
7,000 whom he regrets that the United States should 
have consented, ' ^ by the merest neglect ' ' to lose. ' ' Sev- 
en thousand hardy and industrious people, " ' ' who are 
only awaiting the slightest encouragement to settle 
and develop the rich resources of this portion of 
Minnesota, have not been invited to do so." 

This attitude of our government is historical, 
dating from the earliest days, although the example of 
England was there to show it the better way. The 
British Companies who took the fur trade after New 
France passed under English rule, notwithstanding 
the natural British hatred and distrust of both French 

[191] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

and Indians, were astute to perceive their need of 
trained eyes and hands, and wise to retain the services 
of those metis voyageurs, coureurs, and petty traders 
who during the American Revolution for the most 
part took the side of the revolting colonies. Yet for 
more than a third of the century thereafter our legis- 
lators, blind alike to the value of the fur trade and the 
agricultural wealth that lay hidden in the northwest- 
ern soil, paid no heed to British encroachments, until a 
second war became necessary in order definitely to es- 
tablish our northern frontier,^ and scores of bloody 
conflicts were needed to awaken America to a recog- 
nition of the true character of her Indian problem — 
a problem to the solution of which the metis, fairly 
understood and appreciated, might have lent import- 
ant aid. In fact, wherever Indians have gone on the 
war path, the government has been fain to depend on 
French mixed-bloods to cope with them, says Mr. 
Charles E. Dagenett; no doubt for the reason given by 
Archbishop Tasse, that the ''savages everywhere re- 
cognize the superiority of the metis." Civilization 
seems still to lag behind savagery in this respect.'' 

It cannot, however, be denied that there are bad 
metis as well as good, and in recent years, as the invest- 
igations of the White Earth (northern Minnesota) em- 
broglio have shown, certain individuals of the race, 
chiefly of those whose arrival in this country dates 

1 Letter from the Rev. John P. Williamson, D. D. 

2 The Agency physician of South Dakota attributes it "solely to 

their intelligence" that the French mixed-bloods do not join in 
wars against the Government. He might possibly have found 
loyalty also counting for something here. 

[192] 



The Present Situation 

from comparatively recent times, appear in no envi- 
able light. The chapter on White Earth in Prof. 
Moorehead's work already cited, summarizing and 
elucidating large volumes of official inquiries, are very 
significant on this subject. The existence of certain 
reprehensible individuals, however, in no important 
way reflects upon the race as a whole. 

It was a new departure when the distinction be- 
tween full and mixed bloods was established in the 
Census of 1910. But thus to measure the Indian in a 
material way is not enough ; what is needed is a Social 
Survey, to measure him as a social being. There is a 
hiatus in the white man's thought until he learns to 
understand the Red Man in a social light. 

The theory that the Indians are "a vanishing 
race" has been cogently refuted by Mr. Parker in the 
Quarterly Journal of American Indians (2. '15) and is 
sufficiently disproved by the recent census, which, 
however, significantly finds the increase in numbers 
which it registers to be chiefly among mixed-bloods. 
It is, however, true that tuberculosis, one of the three 
foes which Mr. Chauncy Yellowrobe, in the address 
already cited, finds that the Indian must fight, is 
making fearful ravages on the reservations. Gen. 
Pratt, than whom no one speaks with greater author- 
ity, lays this evil at the door of the Indian policy of 
the Government : ' ' The System has been preeminently 
supreme in working the Indian's ruin, through the 
despair of isolation, idleness, insufficient feeding, hovel 

[193] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

housing, neglect of sanitation, scant medical attention 
and ignoring all the facts of the growth of disease and 
death and the causes. ... Go with me to dozens of In- 
dian Reservations and I will show you right now the 
disease-breeding methods of housing and the vile con- 
ditions under which the Indians are forced to live, 
and give you the amplest proof of the inefficient care 
and scantiness of and disease-breeding food provided, 
.... These alone are full warrant for the deplorable 
health conditions among our Indians" (Journ. S. A. I. 
1915). 

Conspicuous instances of longevity among French 
mixed-bloods in days before the Reservation System 
had cast its blight over the race give a new glimpse 
into the importance of metis in the process of race 
preservation. Joseph Ronde, who in 1786 was the old- 
est living settler in Minnesota, being then eighty years 
old, could tell of one ancestor who lived to be 112, and 
of two others who passed the century mark. He left a 
large family. La Pointe, an uncle of J. B. Bottineau, 
was living in 1884 at the age of 102. Grey-Headed De 
Kaury was 109 years old in 1827; several of the De 
Kaury chiefs lived well beyond a hundred years. We 
have seen Mrs. Kinzie 's observation that One-Eyed De 
Kaury was believed to be 143 years old. The splendid 
physique of some Indian youth of today, who through 
the Government schools have escaped the blight of 
Reservation life, has been shown on many an athletic 
field, in other lands than our own. 
[194] 



The Present Situation 

The opinion of Dr. Z. T. Daniel, Agency physician 
in South Dakota, that only foreign blood can stamp 
out tuberculosis among the Indians, is worth quoting 
in this connection. 



[195] 



XVIII 

French Mixed- Bloods and Our 
Indian Problem 

THAT French mixed-bloods have borne no mean 
part in the development of our country needs 
not be further urged. In the flight of years 
the French strain has been diluted, so that but for the 
amazing loyalty of men of that strain it would now be 
too late to look for any further notable contribution 
from this interesting group. Yet these pages will have 
been written in vain if they shall not produce in the 
candid mind the conviction that it is the right and the 
duty of our government to look more seriously than it 
has done for aid in its still difficult but imperative 
problem of making American Indians into American 
citizens, not only to the men and women of distin- 
guished ability, such as many who have been here 
named, but also to the large number of Indians on the 
Reservations and in the common walks of life, who own, 
and are proud to own, to a strain of French blood. It 
has been amply shown that French mixed-bloods are in 
general more alert, industrious, reliable, with a deeper 
sense of the importance of education, than the general 
mass of Indians. It is the opinion of a white man who 
knows the Indians well, (Mr. Alanson Skinner) that 
the admixture of any white blood stabilizes the In- 
dian; he especially numbers among French mixed- 
[196] 



French Mixed-Bloods and our Indian Problem 

bloods some of the finest men he has known. Wilson, 
in ' ' Prehistoric Man ' ' expresses a like opinion. ' ' The 
French mixed-bloods are more alert, livelier and more 
frank than others." 

It is some years since the value of that moral force 
which Secretary Buchanan half a century earlier had 
found the French mixed-bloods exerting, began to be 
recognized by the more thoughtful of those who had 
dealings with the Indians. Col. Maynandier wrote in 
1886 to the Superintendent of Indian Affairs that he 
had sent to the hostile Sioux two French mixed-bloods 
who lived near Fort Laramie, because "they would be- 
lieve them sooner than the Indians who went with 
them." It is doubtless for this reason that we find 
in later years many Indian Agents chosen from this 
race ; men like Vital Jarrot, the friend of Lincoln — ' ' a 
very capable and agreeable gentleman," writes Col. 
Maynandier — who was appointed agent on the Upper 
Platte, "having great influence from long residence 
among them. ' ' 

Among French mixed-bloods whose influence to- 
day is markedly on the side of the advancement of 
their fellow tribesmen a few may be briefly men- 
tioned : — Gauthier, or Gauki, who holds an important 
position among the Menominee; Forest Choteau, al- 
ready named, the most progressive man among the 
Kansa tribe, more Indian than French, yet living in a 
city, owning horses, an automobile, and in other res- 
pects a progressive man ; the Rev. Francis Frazier of 
Santee, Neb., who has been influential in promoting 
[197] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

the best interests of his people, and Mr. Samuel J. 
Brown of Brown 's Valley, Minn., the son of a French- 
Indian mother, who has made generous use of his res- 
ervation lands in beautifying and otherwise further- 
ing the civilization of the region in which he lives. 
Moses Renville, a descendant of the friend of the mis- 
sionaries, is ''a man of influence who looks French 
and looks Sioux," says an American who knows him 
well. 

It is certain that the French mixed-bloods are 
admired and trusted by Indians in general to an un- 
usual degree. The number of instances which have 
appeared in this study, of Frenchmen who have mar- 
ried into a tribe and have been made hereditary chiefs 
— chieftainship not being in general hereditary, but 
within certain limits elective — is by itself a sufficient 
witness to the admiration and confidence with which 
the French have inspired the Indians. 

Wherever we find them living on the reservation 
we find them the most progressive farmers, the most 
convinced supporters of education, the most indus- 
trious workers of their group, and engaged in the 
greatest variety of occupations. So long ago as 1874 
the metis among the Yankton Sioux, besides farming 
some 2200 acres of reservation land, were, as wrote 
the agent, ' ' apprentices in shops, blacksmith, tinsmith, 
carpenter and grist mills. ' ' Today we learn from the 
logging camps in northern Minnesota that the Chippe- 
was, (Ojibways) few of whom are without French 
blood, are "at least as industrious as the average 
[198] 



French Mixed-Bloods and our Indian Problem 

white man," and that they have, in fact, solved the 
labor problem, which in that industry had become 
acute. We have seen that the Chippewas are now ask- 
ing for home rule. 

It is forty years since Commisioner E. P. Smith 
urged that the obstacles to Indian citizenship lay not 
so much in Indian character as in the anomalous rela- 
tion in which they stand to the Government. It 
would therefore appear that those Chippewas who are 
now asking for home rule (Red Man, Dec. 1914, p. 94) 
are at least not unduly urgent. When Agent Wright 
in 1874 deprecated the marriage of Indian women 
with white men, believing that the full blood Indian 
''stands a much better chance to become a man than 
the mixed-blood," the date of his remark reminds us 
that Frenchmen were no longer entering Indian Res- 
ervations. It was about that time observed of the 
French mixed-bloods of a certain band that a "little 
effort was required to discern any trace of the Indian 
whatever," not so much "because of French blood as 
French character." 

In 1892 the protest of the Turtle Mountain Chip- 
pewas against certain proposals of the Government for 
a settlement of their (still pending) claims was based, 
among other things, upon the failure of these pro- 
posals to provide adequately for education The 
French mixed-bloods of another tribe who entered a 
protest against certain frauds on the part of whites 
were known to their agent as "the most honest and 
trustworthy men of the tribe " who "have taken a 

[199] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

deep interest in the education and civilization of the 
full bloods. ' ' 80 long ago as 1876 the agent in charge 
of the Sauks and Foxes reported that they (mainly 
French mixed-bloods) ''entirely supported the Mis- 
sion boarding school and farm," adding that they 
ought to be treated as citizens, and that they needed 
protection (from the whites) rather than charity. 
Long before this, however, the French mixed-bloods 
had i^roved themselves capable of succeeding without 
''charity." It was in 1825 that Lewis Cass and 
'J'ljomas McKinney urged the importance of making 
some p(^rmanent provision for this class, because of 
the value of their influence, and one may read similar 
suggestions scattered all along through the reports of 
agents and commissioners, from that day to this. 

The fact that the mixture of Frencli with Indian 
blood has brought to the front the best characteristics 
of the Indian is the most cogent argument, as well as 
that nearest at hand, for a more sympathetic study of 
the Indian peoples themselves. Miss Alice Fletcher 
speaks of that which she knows when she finds the pre- 
eminent difficulty of a "just, humane and consistent 
policy" toward this people to have been, and still to 
be, " the antagonism born of ignorance of both races 
of each other's mode of thought, social ideas and 
structure, and customs;" and gifted full bloods and 
metis, writing in the Quarterly Journal 8. A. I., are 
now emphasizing tlie importance of removing this ig- 
norance. It is this, with contentions about land, 
which, says Miss Fletcher, have brought about "a dual 

[ 200 ] 



French Mixed-Bloods and our Indian Problem 

condition, on one side a theoretic government plan, 
ideal and worthy, on the other, modifications of this 
plan in compliance with local ignorance and greed" 
(H. A. I. 1, p. 497). 

Were the civil status of the metis a fixed and 
intelligible status the government might look with 
confidence to this class of Indians for valuable aid, — 
aid all the more valuable and efficient because it would 
enlist the co-operation of the best class of full-bloods 
— those who themselves have an intelligent interest in 
the uplift of their race. But here is the fatal diffi- 
culty: the Government appears not to know its own 
mind upon this important subject; important not only 
from the point of view of simple justice to a consider- 
able number of inhabitants of this country, but of its 
own interests. We have seen that the time has been 
when any white person having any admixture, how- 
ever slight, of Indian blood, was reckoned as a " half- 
breed ' ' and was entitled to some share in the Reserva- 
tion lands of the tribe to which he was held to belong ; 
a position which lent itself to numberless abuses. 
Most properly the Government has undertaken to 
make a more equitable and intelligible ruling. But 
without going here into details of recent discussions 
and tentative plans, it appears to be clear that all the 
elements of the problem have not yet been clearly ap- 
prehended. Especially do the character, influence, the 
very existence, even, of the class of Indians with which 
this study has to do, appear to be practically ignored. 

A worthy estimate of French mixed-bloods was 

[201] 



Our Debt to the Eed Man 

given by Lord Dufferin in his farewell address at 
Manitoba in 1877 : ' ' That inappreciable class of men, ' ' 
he said, ' ' who combine the vigor, strength and love of 
adventure natural to their Indian blood with the civil- 
ization, education and intellectual force of their pat- 
ernal ancestors. They have proclaimed the gospel of 
peace, goodwill and mutual respect with results equally 
advantageous to the savage chief in his lodge and the 
colonist in his chantier. They have been ambassadors 
between the East and the West, the interpreters of 
civilization to the inhabitants of the prairie, as they 
have told the whites what is the consideration due 
the subsceptibilities, pride, prejudices and innate love 
of justice of the savage race. In fact the metis have 
done for the Colony what it could not have done with- 
out them: established between between the white and 
Indian peoples traditional sentiments of friendship 
and good will which it would have been impossible to 
establish without them." (Quoted by B. A. T. de 
Montigny, Recorder of Montreal, in his Biographie et 
Recit de Gabriel Dumont sur les evenements de 1885). 
The Government of this country is now evidently 
awake to the importance and the duty of a new, un- 
selfish and consistent policy with regard to the Indian. 
A thorough revision of the entire body of laws dealing 
with this race is a part of the duty of the present Con- 
gress. The proposed revision, known as the Carter 
Code Bill, was drawn up by a committee of the Society 
of American Indians, was presented in February 
1918 by Representative Carter, a lawyer and a French 

[202] 



Feench Mixed-Bloods and our Indian Problem 

Indian, who also presented the so-called Hayden bill 
''for the purpose of conferring citizenship upon all In- 
dians and segregating the competent Indians from the 
supervision of the Indian Bureau." The former has 
been passed, and the work of revision of the body of 
Indian law is now m process. Congress has still 
to pass an Enabling Act before Indian claims 
may be directly presented to the Court of Claims, 
(an element of the Carter Code Bill) but this 
Act cannot be long delayed. The White Earth Chip- 
pewas (mainly metis) sent to the Congress which ad- 
journed on March fourth, 1916, a delegation of their 
prominent men (four Beaulieus among them) to urge 
certain legislative measures recommended by the In- 
dian Conference of the State (Minnesota.) A French- 
Indian, Mr. Red Fox James, who recently organized at 
Carlisle the first Indian troop of Boy Scouts in the 
world, about that time rode 3,784 miles on his Indian 
pony, carrying to President Wilson a message from 
the Governor of Montana, endorsed by the Governors 
of twenty-four states and by a vast number of other 
influential men, with the petition that ' ' Indian Day, ' ' 
advocated by Mr. A. C. Parker and accepted by the 
Society of American Indians, be made a National holi- 
day in honor of the North American Indians. 

No doubt the most prophetic day in the Indian 
history of the twentieth century was Columbus Day, 
1911, which saw the founding of the Society of Amer- 
ican Indians. Many important successes are already 
to its credit, and into the large horizon of its future 
[203] 



Our Debt to the Ked Man 

the imagination loves to look. But the brightest of all 
the days it has as yet seen was December 10, 1914, 
when President Wilson received a group of delegates 
of that Society. That day, as Mr. A. C. Parker wrote 
in the Quarterly Journal, marked a new beginning in 
Indian progress. ''Never before perhaps had there 
assembled so large a body of men and women of In- 
dian blood, having so wide an influence in the world 's 
affairs." The memorial then presented had been 
formulated by a committee of Indians of distinction, 
in the office of the then Registrar of the Treasury, the 
Hon. Gabe Parker, a French-Choctaw and a member 
of the advisory board of the Society. Mr. A. C. Par- 
ker, then Secretary-Treasurer, now President of the 
Society, introduced to the President the forty dele- 
gates present. Senator Owen (Cherokee) being wdth 
him. The Memorial asked, first, that measures be taken 
to define the status of the Indians by Federal author- 
ity, and second, that the Court of Claims be given 
jurisdiction over all Indian claims against the United 
States. It further made request that just opportuni- 
ties be afforded to insure the efficiency and enlarge the 
capacity of those who have not now the freedom to 
struggle upward. Every lover of this country should 
stand with the Societ}^ of American Indians in press- 
ing the requests of this Memorial which still, in 1918, 
are ungratified. 

For the purpose of the present study it is en- 
tirely legitimate to observe the large part that men 
and w^omen of mixed French and Indian blood have 

[ 204 ] 



French Mixed-Bloods and our Indian Problem 

had in the founding of this Society and in all its acts 
hitherto. Though for five years its first president was 
the full blood Apache the Rev. Sherman Coolidge/ 
cousin by marriage of the Bishop of Nevada, and such 
other full bloods as the Sioux Dr. Charles Eastman and 
the Winnebago Rev. Henry Roe Cloud are prominent 
in its councils, yet such names as Parker, Carter, Gor- 
don (Gaudin), Dagenett, and many others with which 
this study has made us familiar are constantly in evi- 
dence. The Society especially recognizes its debt to 
such women of French blood as Mrs. Marie L. Botti- 
neau Baldwin, Miss Alice H. Denomie, and above all, 
Mrs. Rosa Bourassa La Flesche. ' ' The quiet labors of 
Mrs. Rosa B. La Flesche must forever stamp her as one 
of the most heroic women who ever lived, ' ' writes one 
who bore a laboring oar in the herculean task of 
launching such a society as this; "her deep faith in 
the Society, her devotion to it, carried the first Con- 
ference to success and gave the Society strength to 
live through its first critical period." 

One of the most efficient officers of the Society of 
American Indians is its present Secretary, Mrs. Ray- 
mond T. Bonnin, wife of a metis Captain in the 
Regular Army. Gertrude Bonnin is the daughter of 
a Frenchman and a Sioux woman who were married in 
the Presbyterian Mission Church of Yankton Agency 
S. D. Her first conspicuous service to her people be- 

^ He was made Honorary President by acclamation at the Cedar 
Rapids (Sixth) Annual meeting of the Society, September 29, 
1916, and Mr. A. C. Parker, (a French mixed-blood) elected 
President. 

[205] 



Our Debt to the Eed Man 

gan in Fort Duchesne, Utah, whence as a center Mrs. 
Bonnin established a series of social and community 
centres among the Uintah Utes, the Society of Amer- 
ican Indians granting her such financial aid as its slen- 
der resources rendered possible. Going alone, on horse- 
back, among the women of this turbulent tribe which 
but a few years earlier had been on the war path, 
(supra, p. 156), accosting them not as a stranger but 
as an Indian, she found the women glad to cooperate 
with her. Thus she was able to establish in ' ' commun- 
ity centres" sewing classes for children and domestic 
science classes for women, and at the posts to which the 
Indians came once a week to transact business, rest 
rooms for the women, with the serving of inexpensive 
lunches. The local representative of the Indian Bur- 
eau not being sympathetic with these efforts to uplift 
the Uintah Utes, Mrs. Bonnin removed to Washington, 
where she devotes her entire energies to serving the 
cause of the Indians. Mrs. Bonnin had for years been 
active not only in the effort to secure government reg- 
ulation or prohibition of the use of the noxious drug 
peyote, or mescal, but also in personal influence to dis- 
suade Indians from its use. At its convention held in 
Washington in December, 1917, the National Woman's 
Christian Temperance Union heard Mrs. Bonnin 's 
arguments concerning peyote, and passed a resolution 
to support her effort. 

It does not yet appear that Congress as a whole 
is alive to the character of the French mixed-blood 
and his immense influence over other Indians, and 

[206] 




MRS. GERTRUDE BONNIN 

Social Worker among Indians, Lecturer and Writer, Secretary 

of the Society of American Indians 

French-Sioux 



French Mixed-Bloods and our Indian Problem 

therefore to the aid he might lend to the government 
in the work which must inevitably fall upon it in the 
near future — the work, namely, of doing justice to 
the Indian by making it possible for him to do justice 
to himself by the way of citizenship. For that work, 
so utterly new and untried, Congress will need all 
available help. The debt of this country to the French 
mixed-blood is already large. It can best be repaid, it 
can only be repaid, by enlisting his help in solving 
one of the most serious problems of the present time, 
and one in which he is vitally interested. 

The recent census has shown that the Indian is 
not a vanishing race ; but it is one thing to exist with 
so much of vitality as to be enabled to increase in 
numbers, and another thing to be permitted to employ 
all one's God-given powers to their utmost capacity. 
^'The crushing of a noble people's spirit, and the 
usurpation of its right to be self supporting and 
self governing," writes Mr. Parker in an article to 
which more than one allusion has been made, ' ' is more 
awful than the robbery of lands, more hideous than 
the scalping and burning of Indian women and babes, 
more harrowing than torture at the stake. ' ' Does not 
every white man and woman endowed with a free 
spirit assent to this ? To the Indians who befriended 
our first white ancestors in this country freedom was 
the very breath of the nostrils, and it is amazing that 
four thirds of a century of tutelage have not stifled 
the race. The masterful protest of Chief Garantula 
two and a half centuries ago, to the Governor of Can- 

[207] 



Our Debt to the Eed Man 

ada who tried to force the Five Nations to trade ex- 
clusively with the French, is forceful with this breath 
of freedom: ^'Hear, Yonondio, I do not sleep. . . . We 
are born free; we neither depend on Yonondio (the 
French) nor Corlear (the Dutch) ; we may go where 
we please and carry with us whom we please, buy and 
sell what we please. If your allies are your slaves, 
use them as such." 

It is Mr. Parker who quotes this utterance, add- 
ing, "A race of men and women to whom liberty was 
the condition of life itself must have liberty restored 
if it is again to live." 

What an asset in our national life would be the 
Indian race if once again permitted to live! "An 
examination of our culture, ' ' writes Mr. Leo J. Frach- 
tenberg of the Smithsonian Institution, (Quar. Journ. 
S. A. I.) ''reveals to us the fact that the influence 
of the Indian on our civilization has been far reach- 
ing and comprises every phase of our intellectual, 
political, social, agricultural and industrial life;" 
and he instances as positive contributions not only 
the Indian trails which have become our roads of 
commerce and travel, but such dyestuffs as arnotto 
and cochineal, many fibres used in manufacture, 
even the use of caoutchuc, as well as the element- 
ary industry of raising corn and potatoes, without 
which latter Ireland, southern Germany, Rumania 
and a number of our wealthiest states (and it may be 
added, the bleakest section of the mountains of Syria) 
would be wild, unoccupied regions ; many methods of 

[208] 



French Mixed-Bloods and our Indian Problem 

catching fish and of securing without injury the skins 
of animals; such comforts as Panama hats, Navajo 
blankets, hammocks, moccasins, dog sleds, even snow- 
goggles and pemmican, without which Arctic explora- 
tion would be impossible, with the perhaps question- 
able luxury of tobacco. 

"How has he (the Indian) contributed to the 
world's progress?" asks Dr. Charles A. Eastman in 
the Quarterly Journal of the Society of American In- 
dians for January 1815. "By his personal faithful- 
ness to duty and devotion to the pledged word. ... By 
his constancy in the face of hardship and death. . . . 
This simplicity and fairness have cost him dear, .... 
even to the extinction of his race as a separate and 
peculiar people, but as a type, an ideal, he lives and 
will live." 

"Look back in history," writes the Apache, Dr. 
Carlos Montezuma, "and find if you can, any race 
that ever inhabited this earth who have contended 
against a greater force than ours for a period of four 
hundred years. . . . God only knows the trials, tribula- 
tions, slavery and oppressions to which the Indian race 
has been obliged to submit, and yet is valiantly fight- 
ing to overcome." 

Yes, let us as a nation look back — that we may 
go forward to a far greater achievement than we 
wrought when through blood and tears we freed the 
blacks ; and peacefully, hopefully, joining hands with 
those men and women of mixed-blood who bring us 
"next" to it, apply our own best powers to wipe the 

[209] 



Our Debt to the Red Man 

dark blot from our scutcheon, by enabling the noble 
Indian race to realize its "best." 

Since the first writing of these pages the entrance 
of the United States into the world war has materially 
affected the relative positions of the United States 
and its "wards," whether of full or mixed blood. 
Though it seems probable that the Reservation Indians 
will be declared not subject to draft, yet Indians, 
whether or not on the Reservations, are in large 
numbers proving their loyalty. They subscribed Ten 
Million Dollars to the first and second Liberty Loans ; 
to the number of three thousand they have volunteered 
to serve in various branches of' the military service of 
the United States. Of these, 1,000 are from Oklahoma, 
and 800 were educated in government (Indian) 
schools. Several are First or Second Lieutenants 
(among the former Arthur C. Parker), Raymond T. 
Bonnin, a French Sioux and two others are Captains, 
Oliver Parker, whose father is a Seneca Indian and 
whose mother is a descendant of one of Napoleon's 
officers, has enlisted in the aviation service a 1 at this 
writing is at Fort Worth, Texas. About 400 Indians 
did not wait for their own government to declare war, 
but enlisted in the Canadian army. Before the close 
of the present year it may be expected that 5,000 In- 
dians will be in the military and naval service of the 
United States. 



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